


water in the desert

by sublimation



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Demon AU, Demon Summoning, Demons, Incubus Lance, M/M, Magical Realism, UST? sort of?, and a little about the fetishization of latines, but its mostly about two lonely people needing each other, lots of arguing over conspiracy theories, lots of motorcycle rides, mild warning for descriptions of blood, more angst than planned WOOPS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2018-11-22 02:33:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11370756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublimation/pseuds/sublimation
Summary: Keith and Pidge try to summon a demon for fun. They get Lance, a helplessly romantic incubus.“Lance? What kind of a name is that for a demon?”If he hadn’t driven Pidge here himself, Keith would’ve been sure this was a prank on him. Also, if Pidge had any friends.“I guess you could call me Lur’na-ÿzxelgeneth if you wanna keep it strictly professional.”“Bless you,” Pidge said.





	1. Chapter 1

A full moon over the desert. A cabin in that desert. A basement in the cabin.

Pidge kneeled on its dusty concrete floor and applied finishing touches to the sharp angles of a pentagram. Keith slumped over a table a couple of feet behind, resting his face in the crook of an elbow. He propped his other elbow on its surface, letting his wrist hang inches over a Betty Crocker measuring cup. Keith kept one eye open to watch the slow, steady drip of blood into the clear plastic.

“So bored,” he grunted. “I’m falling asleep here.”

“You’re getting woozy.” Pidge didn’t look up from her chalk drawing.

“I’m done.”

She still didn’t look up.

“Seriously, it reached the mark.”

She groaned and pushed herself up to her feet. With a skeptical squint, Pidge leaned over him to check the blood level. Thick red barely grazed the two-cup mark on the cup. 

“Guess that’s the best we can do without you dying.” Pidge scraped her palms over the tops of her shorts, rubbing blue chalk over them. 

Keith couldn’t help feeling indignant. “Two cups is a pint! That’s what the recipe asked for.”

“It’s not a recipe, it’s a ritual—God, Keith, do not bandage yourself with tape.”

He froze, already holding a roll and biting the end of the tape between his teeth. Pidge dug through a plastic bag from the drugstore by her house, where she’d stopped to pick up their supplies for the night.

One pack of Crayola chalk.

One Betty Crocker measuring cup.

Way more candles than necessary.

And a roll of gauze, apparently.

While Keith wrapped that around his stinging, throbbing wrist, she took the measuring cup by its handle and brought it to the pentagram. She knelt at its rim and waited for Keith to do the same across from her.

“Do we have to say something?” he grumbled.

“Nope, that’s dumb.”

“Good.”

“Just think of what you want from it and ask nicely. Pidge grinned and held the pint of blood over a bowl of water at the center of the sigil. “Can I do this part?”

“Sure.” 

Pouring the blood out was the coolest part and Keith wasn't surprised Pidge called dibs on it. She told him once that each of her family members still let her be the one to make a wish and blow out the candles on _their_ birthday cakes every year. They wouldn’t have birthdays this year, so Keith would let her have this. He felt too lightheaded to be trusted with the most important part of the recipe for a demon anyway.

Pidge tipped the cup, letting Keith’s blood spill out and mix with the water. When it was empty, she let it continue to drip the tiniest drops of red. She closed her eyes and furrowed her brows, leaving her arm extended. Right. Keith should do that too.

He closed his eyes. He thought of what he wanted.

What did he want?

This wasn’t his idea. He knew what Pidge was asking for. She wanted answers about her family. Keith wanted answers about Shiro too. He didn’t actually believe a ghost or a demon would have them, though. He only did this because Pidge did all the work and research, made it easy for him. All Keith had to do was open a vein. Typical Saturday night. What else was there to do for fun in this sandy shithole? 

He would go along with anything Pidge suggested because she was the only one who had come to find him. She wasn’t even there before he got kicked out of their school and she still knocked on his door before any of his classmates did. Pidge visiting on the weekend was the only socialization Keith got that he didn’t dread. He couldn’t care about anyone at his current job or his past school if he tried. It was hard to care about anyone.

The bowl rattled against the floor. Keith’s eyes snapped open at the sound and caught a glimpse of something rising out of the floor—before the candles blew out. 

“Pidge, you see that?” he asked the pitch dark.

“Yeah,” she answered immediately, somewhat shaky. “Uh, demon, are you here?”

The hairs at the back of Keith’s neck prickled in the silence. His heart pounded in his throat.

“Spooky,” Pidge whispered.

“I’m gonna turn on the light,” he said, getting up.

“Scared?”

“Fine, I won’t.”

“I’m kidding, get the light,” she backpedaled right quick. 

He heard her stand up and walk towards the door, then bump into the table. While she spat some real creative curses to the table corner, Keith kicked a couple of candles over in the dark, but otherwise navigated the familiar space with ease. He flicked the lights on and Pidge shouted.

The bowl on the floor was empty and dry, the chalk drawing was gone, and in its place there was now a third person. 

Pidge shouted again. “Demon!”

“Doesn’t look like one.” Keith kept his voice cool despite his heartrate escalating with fear.

That made it smile a cocky little smirk. “Are you going to ask if it hurt when I fell from heaven?”

“What.”

The demon’s face got smirkier and cockier. “Do I look more like an angel?”

Keith’s face did not move. “You’re just a guy in a hoodie.”

Its puffed out chest caved in, slumping its shoulders forward. “Okay, if you quit being so literal for a second you’d know that was a joke.”

“Keith doesn’t know jokes,” Pidge said. “I’m Pidge.”

She held her hand out and the demon shook it. “‘Sup, I’m Lance.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “Lance? What kind of a name is that for a demon?”

If he hadn’t driven Pidge here himself, he would be sure this was a prank on him. Also, if Pidge had any friends.

“I guess you could call me Lur’na-ÿzxelgeneth if you wanna keep it strictly professional.”

“Bless you,” Pidge said.

The idea of blessing a demon made Keith laugh to himself

“Oh, he gets that joke,” said Lance, unamused. 

“We thought you’d be scarier than this,” Pidge explained. “We were hoping for something with, like, a hundred eyes and tentacles.”

The demon’s face twisted into a confused scowl. “What d’you want that for?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. We would’ve stayed in town if we wanted a teenager.”

“Yeah, what can you do?” Keith added.

“Make love, mostly.”

“Ugh.” Pidge stuck her tongue out to mime gagging and started gathering her things.

“What? I’m an incubus.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” she said, louder, then gave Keith a disappointed look. “You can keep it.”

“I don’t want it. Let’s just put it back.”

“Wow, I am right here,” Lance chimed in.

She ignored him. “I don’t know how! I have some reading to do to find out. And you probably have to wait a month before you donate blood to satan again, anyway.”

“A month?” Keith yelled after Pidge as she disappeared up the cellar stairs. He stomped after her. “What am I supposed to do with this dude in my house for a month?”

Pidge snorted.

“No, shut up. I can’t even afford to feed a cat, he’s gonna die.”

“I don’t think demons need food, dude.”

“They don’t,” Lance’s head poked out from the basement to confirm.

This had not gone according to plan. It could possibly have been Keith’s fault for not having a plan. 

After assuring Pidge several times in a row that he felt okay to drive, the two jumped on Keith’s bike and took off towards the faint glow of the town on the horizon. When he came back alone, the house was quiet. The lights in the living room were off, the kitchen was empty, so was the basement. Predictably, Lance would be in the bedroom.

Keith pushed his door open, prepared to see the incubus splayed over it with a rehearsed pickup line, but his room was dark and the bed was empty. Dim orange light poured over it from the wide open door to the bathroom, along with the soft sound of water running. Through the fogged shower pane, he could see the hazy form of Lance’s entire body.

Before Keith knew it, he was standing at the door to his bathroom, pulse pounding in his throat for the second time that night. Water dripped from his dark hair, down the back of his neck, between the narrow curve of his shoulders, all the way to two sharp dimples on his lower back that marked where the curve of his ass began. 

Keith snapped the door shut. Unsure of what to do with himself, he kicked off his shoes and threw himself on the bed. He rolled to his side, resolutely pointing his back at the door. He really summoned a real demon and now it was trying to fuck him.

After a few minutes, the bathroom door creaked open and Lance said, “Your water pressure sucks.”

“Thanks, had no idea,” Keith said to one of the cracks in his wall. 

That was because Utility had turned off the water to this house ages ago. No one was paying a bill.

He listened to Lance move around the room, followed by fabric rustling. “Thought I’d give you a heads up about it, in case you ever consider showering.”

“I shower.” 

Keith had opened up the water meter in the basement and found it was only a missing piece disconnecting this house from the town’s water supply, so he jammed his own scrap of pipe in there to steal some. It leaked and didn’t work very well, but hey, water in the desert.

“That was a joke. And you don’t have a hair dryer, what’s up with that?”

Keith’s bed dipped and creaked beneath the weight of a second person. He glanced over his shoulder to see Lance making himself comfortable beneath the sheets. 

“I do, it’s called a towel. Can’t you sleep on the couch?”

“What a gentleman.” Lance only scooted closer. “Your couch has a tarp over it. Lots of your furniture does. What’s up with that?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t answer. They laid still for a minute in tense silence. Then a soft touch brushed against Keith’s lower back, tracing up his spine over the fabric of his shirt. 

“Stop,” he muttered. 

Lance sighed theatrically and Keith felt him roll away to the other side of the bed. It wasn’t very far. He stayed over there long enough for sleep to find Keith.

That didn’t stop him from dreaming about Lance’s hand creeping over his hip bone from behind. Soft breath over the back of Keith’s neck prickled the small hairs on his nape. Warm fingertips dipped beneath the hem of Keith’s shirt, across the sensitive skin beneath his belly button. With detached ambivalence that came with knowing this was a dream, Keith let him. He kept his back to Lance as a little show of defiance. That quickly turned irrelevant as his cock responded enthusiastically to being taken out and stroked to full hardness. The languid pace Lance’s hand took made Keith’s eyes flutter shut and a quiet sigh escape his lungs. The hand let go and disappeared, left Keith hanging for one frustrating moment, before coming back to touch him again. It was wet with warm spit this time. Keith’s spine arched, his shoulders trembled lightly against Lance’s chest. Lance worked him up and down at the same relaxed rhythm, but the slick slide of his palm escalated every sensation to new levels. Keith was panting. Smooth lips pressed hungry kisses against the back of his neck and a soft tongue flicked out to taste the skin beneath them. Keith kept his hands to himself, one under his head and one against his own chest. It didn’t stop his nails from curling into his palm, into the sheets, when Lance’s grip became tighter, faster. 

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, body tensing at the feeling of climax creeping up on him and—woke with a gasp. He winced and blinked at sunlight glaring straight into his eyes through the window. He was out of breath, out of sorts, and, with sinking dread, registering a cold, sticky discomfort from the inside of the jeans he’d fallen asleep in. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, then whipped his head to look over his shoulder.

The bed was empty. Keith breathed a deep sigh, relieved that Lance wasn’t there. That would have been mortifying. He washed that shame off in the shower and practically threw open the bedroom door after he was dressed.

Lance was meddling around in the small kitchen, digging through cupboards while something sizzled softly on a pan. 

Keith pounded an open hand on the drywall next to its doorway. “I’m not gonna have sex with you!”

At the _Bam!_ of his palm, Lance jumped and spilled an open box of macaroni over the counter. “Agh! Good morning to you too, what on earth?”

“Did you make me dream about you?” he demanded, then got distracted by the smell of warm food. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking you breakfast, like a decent guest.” Lance ignored his mess to turn back to the stove and lift the frying pan away.

Cooking what? “Only thing in my fridge that’s a not condiment is, like, two hot dogs and an ice cream sandwich.”

“Yep,” Lance agreed, dumping two plain hot dogs onto a plate. “Not even any bread.”

Keith didn’t know how to react, so he stood still. Lance digging a plastic fork out from a drawer and placing it on the plate before offering it to him only disarmed him further.

“Sleep well? The answer is yes and no. I knew you’d have a dream, but I have no control over that.”

“I don’t get it. Did you make me have it or or not?”

“I don’t know. It happens to anyone that makes eye contact with me. Like I said, it’s involuntary on my end. Please, just take the hot dogs.”

He hesitantly took the plate. “Just making eye contact shoots a sex dream into anyone’s mind?”

Lance laughed and shrugged. “Little things that help us along. Maybe there’s Darwinism in hell too.”

“Poor Pidge.” Keith frowned and carried his meal to the couch, where he ate every meal.

“Oh, she won’t have a dream,” Lance followed him to assure. “Incubi 101: We have zero effect on anyone who’s not attracted to men.”

“She’s not?” Keith asked through a half-full mouth. “Not surprised, but how’d you figure?”

“I know these things.”

“You barely spoke to her.”

“Back to your crash course: Gaydar is a super real thing for Incubi. I don’t have to talk to anyone to figure it out, I just know.”

It made sense for their survival, Keith guessed. An unsettling question occurred to him. “Can’t you guys force lust?” 

“The real powerful ones, the old ass ones, could,” Lance said.

From the air of dismissal around it, Keith got the vibe that Lance was neither old nor powerful. “Are there like, tiers? Older demons can do things you can’t?”

“Yeah. I’m not there yet, if that’s what you’re worried about. But was I good in the dream?” Lance dropped into the seat next to him, wearing a sly smile.

“Nothing special. I like you more when you’re talking about demonology.”

The practiced coy look on his face dropped so fast Keith almost smiled. 

At the orphanage he was assigned to after his father went missing, Keith rarely brushed his teeth at night. Not because he didn’t have toothpaste and toothbrushes. Not because he didn’t like to. He disliked the feeling of waking up without having brushed his teeth. It was because on his way to the bathroom in the evenings, the matron of his group would bark, “Brush your teeth!” up the dark staircase. Did he like waking up in the morning feeling like something died in his mouth? He kinda hated it. But that was nothing compared to his loathing of letting others make choices for him.

Lance was annoyingly attractive. The kind of attractive that Keith absolutely would not hesitate to fuck with… if that dream hadn’t suggested he do it. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out that an incubus’ corporeal form was designed according to the tastes of the human summoning them. It definitely seemed like the case here. It wasn’t that Keith didn’t want to fuck Lance, it was that Lance’s entire existence felt like the universe demanding Keith to fuck him. That’s why he remembered Sister Michelle. It was weird to remember her while he was horny. Although thinking about her was _very_ effective in making the urge to fuck a hot demon guy go away, which would probably make Sister Michelle feel very pious about herself. 

“Dude, what do you do for fun?” Lance leaned his chest against the back of the couch, pushing aside the sheer plastic tarp hanging over the window and squinting out at the vast nowhere they lived in.

“Nothing,” Keith grumbled, trying to keep his mind on nuns. Then added, “I see Pidge on the weekends. She’s fun.”

Lance tugged the tarp shut again, blinking sunspots out of his eyes. “What are you doing the other five days of the week?”

“Get high or drunk and stare at the walls.”

Lance frowned so deeply that Keith had to explain, “I’m joking.”

“Oh.” Lance’s posture relaxed and a smile found its way back to his face. “Your joking voice sounds just like your brooding voice.”

“Yeah, I can only afford to stare at the walls sober.” Keith got up and went into his room to fetch his jacket from the corner he’d tossed it into last night.

“Man, I can’t tell if that was a joke,” Lance called after him. When Keith reemerged, wriggling one arm into his jacket, he bounced out of his seat. “Where we going?”

“I’m going to work. It’s a thing humans do. By themselves.”

“‘Til when? What am I supposed to do?” 

Keith finished tugging the other sleeve on and reached for his keys. “Whatever you want, I don’t care.” 

“No, I’m asking what _is there_ to do in the middle of the damn desert?” Lance followed him all the way to the front door, where he blocked Keith’s path.

“I dunno, read a book, do some push ups.”

“That’s—Hey,” His eyes flicked down to Keith’s chest. “Is that what you do? How many push ups a day?”

Keith slammed the door on his way out.

When he came back in the evening, he wondered (perhaps a little too hopefully) if Lance was going to pull some other stunt like showering with the door open. But no, he was far less subtle this time. 

Before he’d stepped all the way through the front door, the entire weight of Lance’s body flung itself into Keith. He gripped Keith’s jacket tight, still annoyingly attractive even with a pout on his face. Maybe even more so. 

He whined, “I have never been so bored—in—my—life.”

“It was only a few hours.” 

“Seven hours.” 

“Sorry?” Keith jostled the rest of the way inside, slowed by Lance clinging to his front. “I have to go to work, what do you want me to do.”

The radio in the corner played static-y R&B. Keith didn’t even know they got channels out here that weren’t country.

“Do you work tomorrow?”

“Ye—”

Lance made a noise as if he’d been stabbed and his knees gave out. The sudden dead weight hanging on to Keith’s jacket made him stumble and sway, so he lifted Lance up by the elbows to reset their balance.

“Drama queen,” he muttered.

“I’m a social creature.” Lance was still pouting, but in a way that was tight at the corners, fighting not to break. 

“Can’t relate. Would you hold yourself up?”

“No. Will you bring me with you tomorrow?” 

“No. Lance, you keep getting closer.” His arms had creeped over Keith’s shoulder and their noses were knocking together. 

The smile at the corners of his pout slowly came out of hiding as he said, “I’m not, I just stretched out and… Maybe you leaned in a lil bit?” 

“Nope.”

“Think you did,” Keith opened his mouth to retort, but Lance cut him off, “Yeah, you did. You should take me with you tomorrow.”

“Not gonna do that.”

“Leave me somewhere in town. I’ll walk around. I’ll hang out with Pidge.”

“Pidge goes to school.”

“And why don’t you?”

A beat of silence threw off the comfortable rhythm of their back-and-forth.

Keith swallowed, pushing down the familiar weight of failure that tried to bubble up at the question. “I flunked out.”

And Lance laughed. 

Keith shrugged Lance’s arms off his shoulders and broke away. He marched past stacked boxes of belongings that didn’t belong to him, past scuffed walls with patches of plaster where holes used to be, onto the scratchy sheets of the most uncomfortable mattress in the world. 

He was tired. Tired from a long shift of work. _Seven hours_ , Lance’s voice chimed in at the back of his mind. Tired of driving an hour out of the desert to see his only friend. Tired of staring up at those discolored ceiling tiles for hours straight. Tired of his boring, shitty, depressing life that wasn’t going anywhere. Tired of nothing belonging to him. 

The door creaked. A sliver of yellow light crept in from the hall. “Sorry I pried,” Lance said through the crack.

He shouldn’t be. It was a normal question. “It’s fine. I’m not mad.”

“Um. Did you want—space?”

Keith thought about it. Where was Lance even supposed to go if he did? “Not really.”

Lance came in and stopped at the foot of the bed. 

“You got in bed with your shoes on, you animal,” he said, without any bite behind his words.

A gentle tug at the zipper of his boot. Lance quietly undid one shoe, pulled it away, and let it drop to the floor. Then the other. Keith didn’t know what to make of it. It was a strange thing that no one had ever done to him. 

Lance lingered at the end of the bed, flickering fluorescent light from the hall behind him framing his shape like a shitty halo. He looked completely the opposite of whatever the hell Keith thought an incubus would be. He looked uncertain, unwanted. Unsure if he was welcome to sleep there again tonight, even though he had nowhere else to go, no one in the world who cared that he was alone all the way out here. Lance had to be literally starved for affection. And you know what? So was Keith. Fuck this. 

“Hey.” He pushed himself up to sit on the bed.

Lance came around cautiously and got one knee up on the bed before Keith rose to kneel as well. Eye level with each other now, he read the look in Keith’s eyes and knew what to expect. He didn’t make a move. Keith really thought a sex demon would be more aggressive than this. He hooked one hand around the back of Lance’s head and drew him in.

His mouth was pliant and inviting. Their lips started with a tentative softness in the minute it took for them to match up their movements, find their rhythm. The kiss went straight to wet, open-mouthed filth once they did. Maybe Keith was touch-starved or maybe swapping spit with incubi heightened anyone’s senses, but every slide of Lance’s lips poured waves of need through every bone in his body. And he was already hard just from making out, which was kind of embarrassing, so he dropped his hands to Lance’s waistband without thinking about that. 

“Good idea,” Lance muttered when Keith popped the button open and tugged the zipper down, like it hadn’t been the only thing on his mind since he got there. 

They broke apart to undress themselves, almost competitively. It became an unnecessary race to get your jacket off first (One point to Lance), then your shirt (Point to Keith), then your jeans (Keith never stood a chance. Lance had a head start on that, plus the advantage of still standing upright with one foot on the ground). 

Keith flopped onto his back and Lance’s gaze followed the way his abdomen moved as he wriggled his jeans down. Since the other won the race to get naked first, Keith could see exactly how Lance felt about that in the swell of his cock. He didn’t have a monster dick, which Keith didn’t think to worry about until the exact moment he saw it. No worries, though. It was human-shaped and human-sized and so hard for him. The feeling couldn’t be more mutual, Keith thought, as his own gave a throb in response to the sight. 

Lance’s knee slid away from the mattress and sank to the floor, where he helped tug Keith’s pants past his ankles and out of the way. Then his hand crept up Keith’s calf and over his knee. He propped himself up on his elbows to watch Lance palm the outline of his hardness through his boxers with a tiny, appreciative hum. The touch was so light, but somehow had Keith straining to keep oversensitive reactions in check. He bit his lip to hold in a gasp.

Lance’s fingertips hooked beneath the waistband and pulled it out of their way,right before curling a hand around Keith’s cock and dipping his head to lick a long, wet stripe from base to tip. Keith’s breath hitched in a small, choked sound at the back of his throat and the corner of Lance’s lips twitched upward. Lance opening his mouth to enclose Keith in its heat, squeezing the sensitive ridge beneath the head with his lips, was a euphoric sight. 

He groaned around it like it was the best thing he ever tasted and made a show of sucking it in, inch by inch. The tease was so maddening, Keith struggled to repress a shudder. Then Lance’s head started bobbing up and down in his lap and Keith couldn’t repress shit. He shoved a hand over his own mouth, but it didn’t do much to muffle the groans. The sheets whispered as his elbows slid across them to let himself drop flat on his back, overwhelmed by how good this could feel. He couldn’t think through it, could barely breathe around it. He was a fucking idiot for not having spent every moment with Lance doing this. 

Then Lance pulled away and Keith thought he might die. He switched his mouth for his hand, stroking Keith with a slick, firm friction. “This good?” he murmured, and didn’t wait for an answer because he damn well knew. “We can do more if you want.”

“ _Fuck,_ definitely more.”

As if this were his house, Lance used his free hand to reach out for the nightstand to his left and poke around inside. 

“Excuse you.” Keith would have arched an eyebrow if Lance’s hand wasn’t keeping them knitted together with pleasure. 

It took him a suspiciously short time to blindly dig a familiar little bottle out of there. He must’ve gone through that drawer while Keith was out.  

“You’re welcome,” Lance said, flicking the cap open and coating his fingers with lube.  

The pad of his thumb generously spread that wetness all around Keith’s tight ring of muscle, rubbing against it, making Keith’s breath tremble. The first finger circled inside him with care, slow and teasing at first, stopping to wait when he needed to and pressing a second one in when he could. Growing impatient, Keith wriggled his hips further down the bed to encourage Lance. He seemed to get the message and switched to a less tentative pace, one that made Keith hiss and curl his fingernails into his palms. He was so good at this—seemed to know when and where to crook fingers _just_ so, to keep relentlessly hitting that spot that made Keith’s entire body clench and arch. He was going to lose his _mind_ and refused to finish this with only Lance’s fingers fucking him. 

He shifted up, pulling away from Lance, and his voice came out brusque and smoky when he said, “Come on—Let’s go.”

“So bossy,” Lance teased, although it was undermined by his eagerness to crawl over the bed after Keith. 

It had been a while since Keith did this. He expected an ache when Lance pushed into him, but the pain was as sharp as the pleasure. They burned indistinguishably from each other. Everything was oversensitive and overwhelming. 

It felt good to hear Lance beginning to sound as worked up as Keith, now that his own pleasure had come into the mix. He babbled appreciative nonsense like, “Oh, oh shit, Keith, Keith, okay, that, wow, okay, yeah, _Keith_ , fuck—”

Keith grinned around the moans he couldn’t stop making as his most sensitive edges stretched around the solid heat of him. He thought someone like Lance was too experienced to be impressed by anything about sex with him. He had to be, with the way he’d built Keith up to a fucking mess before he even got it in. They kissed, giving Keith a moment to adjust to the pressure of Lance inside of him, filling him completely. His skin was on fire and when Lance crouched low to bring their faces close, the press of his chest against Keith’s sent a wave of cool, prickling relief that he needed so badly. Lance’s hands slid up from Keith’s hips to his waist, up the side of his ribs, raising goosebumps in the wake of his fingers. God, Keith was more starved than he imagined. He’d been alone, here, without anyone looking for him, for so long. Simply having Lance _there_ , someone who would be there tomorrow and the day after, someone who would notice and care if Keith disappeared, was enough to give chills in the middle of a heated experience. 

He ground his hips into Lance for a moment, as much as their position would allow, and they both moaned in harmony, right into each other’s mouths. Lance drew back, pulling nearly all the way out—Keith opened his mouth to protest—and rolling all the way back inside in one smooth rush of sudden fullness. It pulled the air right out of Keith’s lungs. His face must have looked wrecked, because he felt Lance smile against his lips, and felt the way his chest gently rumbled with a silent laugh. Then Lance started to really move and made all the pleasure he felt before feel like _nothing_ in comparison. 

His lips moved against the shell of Keith’s ear, still rambling little fragments in between messy kisses. The rhythm he set was powerfully slow, enthusiastically affectionate, and so not what Keith expected this to be. Still, each rock of their hips was a lash of white hot ecstasy through every nerve. Keith was out of his mind with need, on the verge of climax. He was sure that each rolling movement of Lance’s body would be _it_ , that was the one to finish him, but no. All Lance did was keep driving into Keith again, again, and again, aligned just perfectly to fuck him stupid. 

Keith could barely form a thought, let alone words. He couldn’t stop making short, hurt sounds beneath his breath with each rock of their hips. Lance kept him close, rubbing his cock between their bodies, sucking and panting against the skin of Keith’s neck now. Lance’s breath scorched Keith’s skin and his thrusts shot chills up his spine, leaving him slack-jawed and feverish. Every now and then Lance responded with words of encouragement, “So good—yes—come on, like that, just like that,” and Keith wondered how he could still be coherent. 

Then the steady pound of Lance’s hips abruptly skipped a beat. He exhaled a gorgeous, drawn out cry right in the space below Keith’s earlobe, where he’d been kissing. While his hips stuttered and lost coordination, Lance’s hand slipped between their bodies to wrap its fingers around Keith and jerk him off ruthlessly after leaving his cock ignored for so long. He gasped and fell into quiet shudders, momentarily forgetting how to breathe while all his brain could focus on was the euphoria building up to a deep roar that drowned out everything except Lance moaning, “Keith—ah!— _Keith_ ,” like cries for help. It brought him up in its swell, and Keith came hard as a crash against rocks, splashing warm over his own belly. 

They came down from their climax at the same time, like this was a fucking grocery store bookrack romance novel. Keith had to take a moment to stare at the ceiling in utter disbelief while his fizzling brain tried to re-learn basic functions like talking out loud and thinking straight. Lance popped a kiss on the tip of his nose then shifted away, off the bed. 

He was back soon after with a towel that he dabbed at the mess across Keith’s waist with. 

“What the fuck, Lance.”

Lance huffed a silent laugh, a quiet exhale through his nostrils. “What, were you gonna use the sheets to clean off? Are we so sauvage?”

He cleaned Keith up before himself, and Keith should not have found that cute. “No, not that, I mean how you— _Sauvage?_ ” 

“You mean what now—”

Keith sat up in bed. “Who even says that?”

“All of France, to start.”

“So nobody normal.”

Lance already had his mouth half-open with the next retort prepared regardless of what Keith said, but stumbled over it when he heard what Keith _actually said,_ and broke into a laugh instead. Maybe the afterglow made him more radiant than usual, but the way his face lit up was so mindlessly attractive. Keith rolled away from his feelings, over to his side of the bed. 

“Don’t tell me you’re not a cuddler,” Lance said. 

“I’m not.” 

Lance followed him beneath the covers. “But that’s the best part.”

He snorted, feeling more blissed out and relaxed than he had in a very long time. Maybe ever.

“I’m serious,” Lance swore. “Can we?”

Keith turned his head to raise his eyebrows at him. Lance’s face held up its sincerity even under his judgment. An incubus who liked the cuddling part more than the sex. Fucking unbelievable. 

“‘Kay, weirdo.”

Lance lit up again, fucking sunshine in the middle of the night, and he scooted right up against Keith’s side. 

“Cuddling is, like, the least weird thing to do after sex. What have _you_ been doing?”

Keith turned back on his side before Lance could see his lips twitch with a held in chuckle. A slender arm draped itself over him from behind and a sharp cheek nestled against Keith’s shoulder. They laid in the dark for a minute, just breathing. Lance’s thumb traced lazy, soothing circles over Keith’s hip. It was nice.

Then Lance started talking. “But really what were you gonna say before I cut you off?”  


“Shouldn’t have cut me off if you wanted to know.”

“Was it that I’m amazing in bed?”

Keith didn’t answer.

“It’s alright, you can admit the obvious.”

Maybe Lance would just go to sleep if he stayed quiet.

“Just three words: You’re amazing, Lance.”

“Fuck you, Lance.”

“You can in the morning, if you’re up for it.”

He was _so_ up for it. Too exhausted to move, Keith blacked out within minutes. He had a dream about Lance again, but this time had satisfaction of pulling him close after Keith woke again with a start from it in the morning. 

Bathed in rays of hot sun spilling through the window, his hand slid over the back of Lance’s palm and pressed it into the bed. Keith bit down on the demon’s narrow shoulder to muffle his groans. He didn’t share Lance’s style of taking it slow, to savor it. He woke up craving more of everything and needed it all at once. His skin buzzed in every place they touched, each little hair prickling up with delight, and Lance was so tight that he could feel even the tiniest twitches and tremors when Keith did something right. Lance pushed himself up on his elbows and turned his head sideways, into an angle that invited Keith to shift over his shoulder and kiss him with all the affection he was desperate for. 

Keith came so hard, again, that it felt like being poured inside out. It felt like leaving his body, and only part of him made it back. 

He collapsed at Lance’s side, panting. He was on Keith in seconds, eager to nuzzle up to his shoulder and kiss a gentle trail up his clavicle. Keith stared up at the spiderwebs hanging off his light fixture in a daze. _Is this my life now?_ How okay he was with the answer being yes _should_ have been a cause for concern. But Keith didn’t get to this point of his life by being concerned for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  beautiful cover by my love [daughterofthestars](http://daughterofthestars.tumblr.com/post/172471353088/gift-art-for-my-best-babe-667-darkavenue-for-her) \- please leave her a nice ask if you have time!


	2. Chapter 2

He passed Lance a helmet. Lance looked at the thing with suspicion.

“Whose is this? You have a second rider often?” He sounded jealous.

Keith did, actually. He gave Pidge rides fairly often, but Lance must have seen her wearing her own green helmet the night Keith took her home after the summoning. The spare in Lance’s hands was far too large for her. 

Keith put his on, muffling his words slightly as he said, “That one used to be Shiro’s.”

Dark blue eyes stared down at the helmet in his hands, black paint chipped around its edges. “Who’s that?”

Keith swung a leg over his bike to mount it. “He’s not here.”

Lance’s eyes flicked up. “Where is he?”

“Who knows.”

Lance stood still in the cabin’s sandy backlot strewn with garbage bags, doing nothing to acknowledge Keith on the bike and ready to go. “Is all that boxed up stuff in there his?” 

“No.”

“It yours?” 

“No, Lance. You’re gonna make me late.”

“ _Oh!_ Sorry!” He scrambled to get the helmet on. 

Lance slipped behind on the motorbike and locked his arms around Keith’s waist. Once Lance got settled in, he pulled the clutch and took off. With the wind and the engine roaring all around them, the ride into town was long, wordless, and comfortable. 

“I’d show you around, but there’s seriously nothing to see,” Keith said as they rolled to a stop outside of his least favorite frozen yogurt shop. 

“Anything’s gotta be better than staring at sand all day.”

Lance didn’t have helmet hair when he tugged it off his head. He wasn’t even sweaty. Keith’s eyes narrowed at him because, surely, that was some demon magic at work. He _did_ look different than before. The more Keith looked at him, the more obvious it was that Lance’s skin had a dewier glow, his eyelashes were so much fuller and feathered, the tip of his nose and the peak of his cheekbones seemed to always catch the sunlight no matter which way he turned his face. Lance looked good before, but today there was an unnatural element. Some kind of magnetic energy that pulled your attention toward him. Keith thought of old vampire movies he binged with Pidge, and how they became subtly prettier after they fed. 

Apparently, he missed something Lance was saying. “Keith? You there?”

“What?”

“I said where do I find you and when?” Lance repeated himself with a knowing smile.

“Oh. Right here at seven.”

“Here?” Lance looked at the window of the froyo shop. Then back to Keith. “ _Here_ here?”

“Yeah.” Keith kept his face as flat as his voice. “I’ll be at my job.”

Lance’s eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. “Your job is _selling ice cream?_ Oh my go—” He started to laugh, but slapped a hand over his mouth and backpedaled frantically. “I just, oh man, I imagined you doing something—something rugged like, I don’t know—Working in a car shop—Rolling out all sweaty and greasy from underneath a Mustang on one of those little skateboards that go under your back.”

“Wow, you really thought about that one.” Keith wished his expression could go any flatter than this. 

“Can’t I hang out here and get free ice cream all day?”  
  
“No.”

Lance looked around at the street they were on. It was a small shopping center with a gas station, some takeout places, and a fabric store. “So what’s there to do? Where’s the mall?”

“There’s a Walmart thirty minutes from here, good luck.”

Keith turned away as Lance made a distressed sound in his throat. When he went inside, his boss jerked her head down towards the till and pretended she hadn’t been staring.

“Who is that?” she asked with practiced casualness. 

Keith hoped Lance hadn't met her eyes through the window front. “A friend.”

She looked up, stunned at the idea of Keith having a friend other than that girl who stole ice cream sandwiches from them. “From, like, the internet?”

“Yeah, Susan, I ordered him on Amazon.”

Susan and Keith took a pause to reflect on how much they hated each other. The only reason she never fired him was because no one could handle the soul-crushing despair of selling frozen yogurt for long without quitting. Only reason Keith didn’t quit was because every other service job had fired him, or knew to avoid him, because he was terrible at service jobs. At this point they were competitively putting up with each other, waiting to see who would be the first to crack. Good fucking luck, Susan.

Late in the afternoon, Lance turned up again. This time, he was with Pidge. He waved to Keith through the glass.

“Tell your friend _he_ can come in,” Susan said when she noticed the pair standing around outside.

Pidge wasn’t actually allowed into the froyo shop. She got banned for stealing ice cream sandwiches three times too many.

“No, it’s fine,” Keith mumbled.

The two loitered around on the sidewalk in front of the shop for half an hour without coming inside. It wasn’t until Lance pressed his nose against the window with his palms pressed together in a begging gesture and a big, quivering pout on his face that Keith’s boss broke. She chuckled and shook her head.

“Fine, you can go early this time,” she said in a good-natured tone Keith had _never_ heard from her.

He blinked at her in disbelief, then at Lance still making puppy eyes through the window. Fucking unbelievable.

 

* * *

 

“How’d Lance even find you?” Keith asked, climbing up the polished wood staircase of Pidge’s house. 

“There’s only one garrison here,” Lance said, a few steps behind him. “I just showed up and said I’m there for Pidge.”

“He said he’s my foreign exchange student.”

“There’s no way they bought that.”

“They bought that she registered me months ago, but the papers were lost.”

“There’s _no_ way,” Keith insisted.

“Everyone in the admin office was so blushy and smiley with Lance there, it was ridiculous.” Pidge led them down the hallway of her second floor, to her room. “They gave him a day pass and I’ll forge his registration tonight so he can come back.”

Lance’s eyebrows shot up. “You can _do_ that?”

“Oh yeah,” Pidge said, flippantly. “I can totally prove Lance Tropicana is a real human that actually exists.”

“You said your name is Tropicana?”

“Well, I had to think of something on the spot, _Keith_. It’s pretty funny, right?”

“He’s not gonna get it.”

“I don’t,” Keith confirmed. It earned two disappointed sighs from his friends.

Pidge’s room had everything in twos. Two desks cluttered with materials. Two wardrobes on opposite walls. Two beds, one by the door and one by the window. No one was surprised that Lance asked about it. 

“You share a room with someone? Is your family out?”

Pidge and Keith shared a look. Lance had no idea about her family.

“Her mom’s here,” Keith said. “She just doesn’t leave the room.”

Pidge added, still as flippant as earlier, “She hasn’t left her room for ten months.”

“Uh.” Lance’s brow wrinkled. “She okay?”

“No. My dad and brother went missing last year.”

“Oh my god.” Lance clapped his fingertips over his mouth and leaned in closer to her. He put his other hand on her shoulder. “Are _you_ okay?”

Pidge gave him a small, hollow smile. “Didn’t Keith tell you how we met?”

“Keith doesn’t tell me shit.”

Six months ago, a tiny girl with a sharp glare and gritted teeth marched up to Keith’s counter. He worked at a Chinese place back then, before he got fired for attitude problems. 

She made no preamble. Cut right to the chase with a rude demand: “You the guy who flunked out of the garrison?” 

“Yeah,” he answered, his tone equally standoffish as hers.

“Can I talk to you about it or not?”

“Why?”

“ _Chat with your friend later if she’s not gonna order_ ,” Keith’s ex-boss barked at both of them. 

“ _Okay!_ ” Keith snarled right back, then turned back to her and said, in his normal voice, “Okay. Sure.”

She left without even asking for his number. Keith made no effort to offer it before she went out the door. Weird, but he supposed that was that. He had a shit night at work and to top it off, an order for a delivery came in five minutes before closing time. Tired and pissed off, he drove out thirty minutes to one of the nicer neighborhoods in town. Keith rang the doorbell six times in succession, just to make it clear that he hated whoever this takeout belonged to. 

Pidge opened the door. She invited him in, took a box of noodles into her mom’s room, then showed Keith to hers. They sat on her floor and split the rest of the takeout. She told Keith her theory about how her family and Shiro were still alive. It was so detailed, so out there, and so full of hope. “Everyone thinks I need help,” she muttered at the end, although her voice sounded more challenging than insecure. Daring him to agree, ready to argue. 

Keith had crazy theories about his family when he was younger, too. He wasn’t sure if he believed in Pidge’s right off the bat, but he told her about how his mom disappeared without explanation too. How his dad always thought she was still alive somewhere for his entire life. How he left Keith to find her. 

“Did he?” Pidge asked.

“I dunno. I hope so.” Keith hoped they were looking for him next. 

She told Lance most of that, in between glances to Keith to make sure he didn’t mind it. Keith would never have found a way to tell him without feeling stupid. Pidge was good at saying crazy shit she believed in without doubting herself mid-way through.

Lance turned to him with a soft look in his eyes. “That why you’re squatting all the way out there in the desert like a hermit?”

“Yeah.” Keith tried to sound as casual as Pidge about these things. “My dad used to live there.”

He watched Lance ponder on that for a moment. Keith swore he could see a series of sudden understandings happening right on his face. 

“But where was your room?” Lance asked. “The basement?”

“Nowhere. I never lived there until a few months ago. He hasn't been there for years.”

“Are you telling me we sleep in your dad’s bed, you freak?”

Keith’s mouth opened, but stayed still that way for one blank, incredulous moment. “I—It’s the _only_ bed there, don’t make it weird.”

“It _is_ weird.” Lance turned to Pidge for validation. “Would you sleep in your brothers old bed?”

“I do,” she answered, right away.

“ _What?_ ” 

Keith’s eyebrows quietly came up in mild surprise, as well. 

“There’s a plum tree just outside this room,” Pidge explained. “The leaves are really close to the window and I was always jealous that Matt had the bed closer to it. I can’t see it at all from mine. Ever since he went missing, I sleep in this bed so I can see the tree.”

A few seconds of heavy silence fell over them when she was finished. Keith felt such a strong rush of affection for her all at once, it was almost sickening. Lance stood up from his place on the floor to practically press his nose against the window. “You make me miss my siblings.”

Pidge tilted her head curiously. “Demons can have siblings?”

“Pick up a book sometime, would you,” Lance teased.

“How am I supposed to know which parts of mythology are factually accurate?” She huffed. “Nothing I read went into details about demon babies, anyway.”

After a beat, she added, “I might’ve skipped it because that’s horrifying.”

“How can a baby be an incubus, even?” Keith said. “That’s gross.”

“Hey! It’s not gross, we don’t—“

“If your parents are immortal,” Pidge wondered out loud, “Do you have like two hundred brothers and sisters?”

“No! I have a normal amount.”

“What’s normal?” Keith asked. “Twenty?”

“Yeah, twenty one,” Lance deadpanned.

“Really?”

“ _No!_ ” Lance couldn’t get the word out without laughing.

They had so many questions for Lance, and he seemed to enjoy sharing about himself so much, that they pulled an all-nighter just talking about hell culture. By the time the dim light of dawn crept through that window Pidge liked so much, they had swerved into way-too-deep questioning of heaven and hell and science and religion. Pidge invited them to pass out on the extra bed before crawling into her own (or her brother’s, technically?). 

“Don’t do anything gross,” she added, voice muffled by her pillow. “I even hear you kissing, I’m gonna barf and you gotta clean it.”

Lance and Keith snorted to themselves at the same time as they settled in pretty easily. They were already getting used to sharing a small bed together. Lance wasted no time in draping himself right over Keith, with an arm across his waist and his nose tucked right up against the neck of Keith’s shirt. Apparently, giving permission to cuddle once had opened up the floodgates. At least Keith was gradually discovering that the reality of cuddling wasn’t as suffocating as he always imagined in theory. Not the way Lance fit so comfortably against him, at least. 

Keith dreamt of him again, predictably. Lance arching up against him, gasping into his mouth. He woke with a full body spasm, in a cold sweat. To his relief, the sounds that pulled him out of the dream early were laughter and clattering from Lance and Pidge downstairs. Keith wondered if Lance drew Pidge out of the room before Keith woke up on purpose. He had a tendency to be considerate in the strangest ways.

 

* * *

 

A rock appeared in Keith’s shower the next day. It was the size of his hand, grey, porous. Was Lance trying to decorate his bathroom, or…? Keith put it back where he found it, so as not to offend him. He was starting to make himself at home here, Keith guessed. When he reached for soap on the sill, his knuckles clinked against something else that wasn’t there before. A mug. From the kitchen. With the handle of a spoon sticking out of it. He plucked the spoon out to find it sticky and coated in brown sugar. Right next to the mug, an upside down jar of honey. _Did he make himself tea in here?_

Sharing his shower with that lineup of weird items made him uncomfortable, so Keith finished up  quick as he could with his bathroom’s puny excuse for water pressure. While towelling off, he spotted a jar of some white, waxy shit left by the sink. He spun it to read the label. “ _What the fuck is coconut oil?_ ” he whispered to himself.

He threw some pants on and yanked the bathroom door open. “Lance, do your demonic water rituals somewhere else.”

“My what.”

Lance didn't look up from Keith's phone. He sat cross-legged on the bed, scrolling through an app that definitely wasn't installed on it before Keith's shower. 

“Whatever you do with the rock and the honey and all that, I dunno.”

Lance glanced up and his eyebrows lifted slowly. “It’s a pumice stone.”

There was an ‘ _obviously,_ ’ at the end of the sentence that Lance didn't say out loud, but his tone implied. Like knowing what kind of rock it was should have cleared everything up for Keith. It cleared nothing. 

“Okay? Do that in the kitchen sink?”

Lance let out a quick, sharp laugh. “Fucking gross, dude.”

“What? What gross shit are you doing with rocks and oil in my shower?”

It bloomed into a full out laughing fit. Lance dropped Keith’s phone over the sheets to press a hand over his mouth. “Oh, dude. You—hahaha,” he paused to take in a proper breath , swallowed a laugh down, and forced his face into a serious look. He struggled to hold it as he said, “I'm trying to decide if acting like you don't know how exfoliating works is you fucking with me.”

“You don't need _food_ to live," Keith argued, without quite understanding why he felt the need to. "How is it _possible_ that you need exfoliation?” 

“It feels good, let me live.”

“Do you shed your skin? Are lizard people real?”

“No! Only lizard person here is you with your dehydrated pores and flaky lips.”

By reflex, Keith rubbed his lips together. Rough, broken skin scratched together.

“It's still kinda hot,” Lance reassured almost instantly. 

Over the course of their little discussion, Keith had gradually stepped close enough to the bed for Lance to reach up and give his bottom lip a teasing swipe with the pad of his thumb, quick as the strike of a match. 

Keith’s mouth followed Lance’s hand as it pulled back and caught the other boy’s lips halfway. He took himself by surprise with how easy the urge came, and how easily Lance welcomed it. Keith lifted one knee onto the bed and dropped himself into Lance’s lap, then brought the other up to get a comfortable straddle going on. Lance’s palms pressed into the sheets just a few inches behind him, propping him up and keeping them from toppling to the mattress when Keith’s chest pressed against his. 

Keith closed his teeth around his bottom lip and, fuck, Lance won the argument because his lips were offensively silky. Keith melted right into them. He fell, deep and slow, into the kind of burning kiss that radiated through veins and gathered in toes. Lance arched into the kisses, shifting their mouths into just the right angle to make a wave of pleasure wash over Keith the next time their tongues met. He couldn’t stop the quiet, eager sound that rose from the back of his throat.

At the noise, Lance’s mouth paused its rhythm. His hands snapped up to hold Keith by both shoulders. It threw them out of balance, and the mattress creaked beneath them as Keith’s weight pushed Lance’s back to the bed. Lance rolled along with that momentum and flipped them over in the same motion. 

“Well!” He popped one kiss on Keith’s cheek. “Goodnight!”

Keith’s eyebrows twitched downward as Lance disentangled their legs and crawled to his side of the bed. Keith blinked and stayed still. Lance was actually kicking up the covers and nestling under them.

“Um. What?”

He bundled himself up and turned his back to Keith. “I’m so tired.” 

Keith sat up. “Seriously?”  
  
“School is draining.”

“You’re not even a real student.”

The pillow muffled Lance’s voice. “The school doesn’t _know_ that.”

A little confused, Keith laid back on his own side of the bed and stared up at the ceiling. So, he wasn’t irresistible anymore now that Lance wasn’t starving. Okay. 

Lance still made him a grilled cheese for breakfast the next morning.

He wasn’t acting weird, nor commenting on the weirdness from the night before, so Keith didn’t comment either. That would make it weird.

 

* * *

 

“They’re not gonna let you into class with Pidge this late.” Keith spoke from experience. He was perched on his bike and waiting for Lance to finish strapping on his helmet behind. 

“Yeah, they will.” Lance couldn’t sound more unbothered. “I’m a foreign exchange student.”

“So? No consequences?”

“If anyone asks, Pidge says I’m in English class, learning English.”

“They’ve heard you speak. They know you don’t need it.”

“Because I never skip English class, Keith!” Lance huffed theatrically and flung his arms around Keith’s waist.

He laughed silently, a soft rumble through his chest that Lance could feel, before starting the motorcycle and tearing off toward the town.

 

* * *

 

 

“Lance, I don’t want whatever this is.”

Keith stepped into the living room and held up a plastic bottle he found in the shower. Lance had gotten better about putting away cups and things that belong in the pantry, although he still left the rock in there. And new things kept finding their way in.

Lance looked up from filing his nails on the couch. “It’s _soap._ ”

“Like hell it is, it smells like syrup.”

“It says strawberry cheesecake right on the bottle.”

“That’s gross? Why do you wanna smell like food? How’d you even buy this?”

“I blew the Walmart manager for it.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Hey, don’t you get ever creeped out?”

“By the Walmart manager? Every time.”

“No. Living out here.” With his lips, Lance pointed out the window over his shoulder. “In the creepy ass desert an hour’s ride away from another human being.” 

“I mean, humans are more dangerous than anything out here. There's not much out here.” After a beat, Keith added, “Except literal demons.”

He flopped back onto the couch. “Alright, I’ll give you that point.”

“There _is_ something weird that happened near-ish here…” Keith set the bottle of pink soap down on the coffee table. “When I was a kid, five campers who came out here to do some rock climbing went missing.” 

“Oh, creepy.” Lance sat up and curled his legs under himself to make room for him to take a seat. “Were they ever found?”

“The rescue team found their campsite kind of destroyed. Two bodies were lying in the desert a mile away from camp, and they weren’t wearing anything but underwear.”

Lance raised his eyebrows. “Kinky.”

Keith knew he would like that bit. “One of them had a broken skull,” he added.

His eyebrows dropped low, deeply concerned. “Too kinky.”

“But…” Keith continued the story, paying no mind to the commentary track. “Autopsies decided they both died of hypothermia.” 

“In the desert.”

He brushed it off with a wave of his hand. “That’s not the weird part, it gets pretty cold at night.”

“Five people going missing and only two found isn’t the weird part?”

“The other three bodies were found months later, also with fractured skulls and crushed ribs. And they were wearing the clothes of the other two bodies that were found earlier.”

Lance’s entire body cringed in his seat. “Again, too kinky.” 

“Oh! Forgot to mention, when the clothes were tested the investigation team found traces of radioactivity in them.”

“Well, they are right next to a military base…”

“There was actually a sixth guy who left the trip early, before all this went down.”

“Okay then! You should’ve said that right away.” Lance threw his arms up. “Seventh guy did it. He’s the murderer. Calling it.”

“No, no. The autopsy report said injuries to the bodies were caused by a force too strong for a human to cause.”

Lance dropped his hands to his lap with a thud. “It wasn’t the guy?”

“Nope. _But_ … He claimed to see bright spheres in the sky the night before he left, and some people in the town confirmed they saw them too.”

“From the shit the military was testing?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you think it was—Bigfoot?” Lance twitched an eyebrow and Keith rolled his eyes.

“It was obviously aliens.”

Lance laughed.

“It explains the inhuman trauma and the radioactivity!”

“Wait, are you serious? So does military weaponry!”

“What about the bright flying spheres?”

“Missiles.”

“No!” He said it so quickly that Lance fell into laughter. “No, listen, there was no evidence of missile blasts.”

“There’s no evidence of aliens landing in the fucking canyon either!”

“That’s because we wouldn’t know what evidence of that _looks_ like—”

“WHA—HAHAHAHA—” Lance threw his head back, laughter rising into hysterics.

Keith had to shout to make himself heard over it. “No, fuck you! Is it so much of a fucking stretch when Incubi exist?”

“Yes! Because there’s proof of an incubus right fucking here,” Lance managed to say after getting his laughing fit under control, punctuating it with a vague wave of his hand over his entire self. “We have nothing to do with aliens, that is such a fucking leap.”

“I leapt, I landed, try to catch up.”

“Keith—” Lance choked for a second, fighting down another laugh that bubbled up in his throat. “I think I would know if aliens were real by now.”

“Really? You know so much about the universe? Do you even know any midwest states?”

And suddenly all trace of laughter was gone. “I know states, Keith!”

Keith raised his eyebrows and waited.

“I can’t even—Listen, you—Midwest? Okay,” after stammering a bit, he paused for a second to think. When he spoke again, it was very slow, with his eyes glued to Keith’s face, looking for clues. “S—Syracuse?”

“Wow. Not a state. Not even in the midwest.”

“Mi _tch_ igan?” 

“What?” 

“Don’t even! I know Mi _tch_ igan’s a state.”

“Are you trying to say Michigan?”

Lance went quiet, blinked twice. “Fuck you, Keith.”

“You could.” 

In his head, it seemed like the kind of joke Lance would make, but a tense, humorless silence stretched between them that made Keith regret saying it.

“Maybe we should not talk to each other for the rest of the night and I can focus on… my…” After a moment of darting his eyes around, Lance picked up the nail file again and returned to staring at his fingertips. “... Cuticles.”

Keith merely stared, reeling from the sudden switch in tone _again_ , at a moment he swore things were going well between them. “Okay?”

“Okay!” Lance chimed back, and diligently ignored Keith while he buffed his nails to perfection.

Either Lance’s lack of geographical knowledge was a sore spot, or he was legitimately repulsed by the thought of sex with Keith again.

 

* * *

 

They weren’t fighting. Lance was amusing as ever to Keith when they did errands around town or played games with Pidge in the afternoon. He didn’t seem unhappy at all. He even made friends without them. Keith and Pidge prickled the first couple of times Lance brought a fourth stranger along. An engineer named Hunk with a gooey, ridiculous gentleness radiating right out of his core. It ticked Keith off at first, so sweet that it had to be fake. He and Pidge had grown to be fast friends when they first met out of shared resentment. But kindness clung to Hunk like an aura that even Keith’s cynicism and Pidge’s judgmental snipes didn’t crack. He bled a vulnerable sincerity Keith hadn’t found in anyone else ever since Shiro disappeared. 

It wore them down, to Lance’s delight. Lance fucking sparkled when they were all together. That was was the only way Keith could describe how he brightened the room, made a couple of disillusioned kids like them feel a little friendlier and smile a little easier. 

The shift in attitude when Lance had to be alone with Keith was disorienting. Some nights, he barely looked at him. He didn’t like when Keith looked at him, either.

“What?” Lance snapped, feeling Keith watching him cook dinner.

“What?” Keith leaned on the doorway to the kitchen.

Lance didn’t move his eyes away from the bubbling pot of mac and cheese. “You’re looking at me.”

“You’re the only one here.”

“I’ll go somewhere else then. It’s ready anyway.”

“Thanks?” 

Lance pushed his shoulder aside to dip out of the narrow kitchen. He went into their room and closed the door behind him without saying anything back. Which was _fine_. Before Lance, Keith had eaten by himself nearly every day for the past year. He was used to it.

It felt so much lonelier knowing there was someone else right in the other room.

By the time Keith was ready to go to sleep, he took care to shut the door quietly and walk with gentle steps through the dark. The entire time he spent getting himself under the sheets, there was a stale, frozen air around Lance’s side of the bed that meant he was still awake. Keith blinked at the ceiling. Then he coughed, loud and deliberate. Lance didn’t take the challenge. He didn’t move an inch and didn’t say a thing. Keith gave the ceiling a glare that softened almost instantly. 

He would have a smoother time being fine with Lance not wanting to fuck him anymore if he wasn’t obligated to dream about it every single night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are some references in this chapter to  
> [this onion article](http://www.theonion.com/article/rock-apparently-factors-into-girlfriends-shower-ro-33138) keith wrote  
> and [this irl unsolved mystery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQpNdevrtiM) i ripped off for the aliens argument


	3. Chapter 3

The smell of fresh waffle cones gave Keith a headache. A playlist of Top 40 songs from two years ago that he’d heard hundreds of times by now didn’t help.

“You know the mafia had her house wiretapped?” Lance sprawled over the counter from the customer side, practically laying on it. 

Propped up on both elbows, he held Keith’s phone in front of his face in one hand and a half-melted cone of soft serve in the other. Lance had been hanging inside the frozen yogurt shop for hours now, since Pidge didn’t come along today. Keith thought Susan would be a dick about him waiting around in there for Keith’s shift to end, but no. She was delighted by Lance, to Keith’s massive discomfort. She told Keith to let him have free cones, which Keith had _never_ seen her offer unless a customer was relentlessly crying and/or screaming. Lance hadn’t abused the offer much. He was too swept up in reading about the death of Marilyn Monroe. 

“It’s gotta be Bobby K. The housekeeper _said_ he was there _that_ _night_.”

“Told you the government did it,” Keith said with a satisfied smirk.

“It’s just impossible for the police to bungle up an investigation this badly, ‘specially someone so important.”

“Yeah.”

“Kennedy _lied_ about not being in LA that weekend!”

“I know.”

That was a lie. Keith had actually not known quite this much about it. Only a vague, tangential awareness of it from watching too many unsolved mysteries on all-night youtube spirals. Lance didn’t seem invested in any of Keith’s favorites, beyond making fun of his beliefs. For some reason, when Marilyn Monroe got mentioned in passing, _this_ was the one he latched onto like it was the most fascinating thing Keith had ever told him. His eyes had been glued to listicles about it for hours.

“And the housekeeper flew off to Europe right after, even though she was a key witness.”

“Yeah. Your froyo’s melting.”

Lance tore his eyes away from Keith’s phone screen to the trickle of chocolate spilling down his wrist. He leaned into his arm and licked it up with one swipe of his tongue. Keith couldn’t look away. Lance met his stare and gave him a knowing smile, which he returned. And that very well may have been the first time Keith ever smiled behind this godforsaken counter. 

“D’you want to see something cool?”

“Cooler than Marilyn Monroe?”

Keith hesitated. Their interests hadn’t _quite_ aligned yet just because Lance found one mystery to obsess over. 

“Just thought you’d wanna see a spot I like,” he said flatly.

Despite Keith’s monotone, Lance’s face immediately softened. Sometimes it seemed like he could read things Keith didn’t quite express. 

“It’s a canyon,” he continued with a little more confidence, “With a bunch of petroglyphs to see if you walk around. And it looks nice at sunset. You wanna go?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “But—Actually—You know what would make it better?”

“What?”

“Susan!”

“ _What?_ ” Keith snapped.

“What?” Susan called out from her office in the back, in a cheery voice Keith had never heard her use.

“You wanna come somewhere cool with us?” Lance shouted back. 

Keith’s jaw dropped and his eyebrows furrowed. “What are you—”

“Where is it?” Susan emerged from the back room. “Don’t lean on the counter, Keith,” she hissed, even though Lance was leaning on it as well.

He straightened up, glaring at Lance.

Lance wasn’t even looking at him. “It’s, like, this really beautiful canyon. So fun there. You would love it.”

“You’ve never seen it,” Keith said through gritted teeth. “You just heard about it for the first time two seconds ago—”

“I’m sure it’s great!” Lance raised his voice to speak over him. “There’s petraglyphics!”

Susan scrunched her nose. “Um. Sorry, no. I hate the desert.”

“But you live here—I mean, you could get a sweet tan. Mmm, sunkissed!”

“Cute, but I don’t tan, I burn.” She laughed with a gentle shake of her head—Genuinely laughed, not the dead-eyed replication of happy human sounds that she did for customers—and disappeared back into her office. 

Lance sighed deeply. “Okay. I did my best.”

Mouth half open, Keith ran the tip of his tongue along the back of his teeth to punctuate the incredulous nods of his head

* * *

 

He drove Lance to his favorite spot: A plateau with a 360-degree view of an eerily empty world. Nothing but sand and canyons for miles in all directions. They pulled off their helmets and just sat for a couple of minutes, looking over the pale gold expanse stretched in front of them.

“I love the sand and the heat so much,” Lance murmured over Keith’s shoulder. “Only thing missing is the water.”

“It’s no beach, but I like it too.” 

He led Lance down into a slot canyon with the familiar ease of walking a path he’d taken dozens of times by now.

“I thought of warning you about how hot it gets out here, but I figured it’s nothing compared to where you’re from.”

Lance snorted. “You think hell is hot.”

“I mean, _hot as hell_ is a pretty common phrase, among a hundred others with the same idea.”

Lance followed him deeper through the base of the narrow canyon. Beams of sunlight shot down into the cavern from above, creating natural spotlights in the dimness of the stone chamber. 

“Hell isn’t fire, Keith. It’s ice.”

Keith paused and turned around, just to check if Lance was fucking with him. But there wasn’t a trace of a smirk on his face. “How could everyone get it so wrong this entire time?”

Lance shrugged. “If the prudes writing about heaven and hell hadn’t been too pious to summon a demon, they could’ve gotten the right answer.”

Keith snorted a laugh and Lance grabbed his shoulders, turned him around, then shoved him forward to lead the way inside. “Come on, show me what the fuck a petrograph is.”

“Petroglyph.”

He hiked further in, through alternating pools of light and shadow, until they reached a spot where the sandstone walls on both sides were covered in faint images carved into the stone. They were so worn down that you could miss them easily, but more and more would catch your eye once you knew what you were looking for. To be fair, Keith called them rock drawings for ages before he’d brought Pidge here. 

He watched Lance step up close to the uneven walls layered in different shades of rock, examining thoughtfully with slightly parted lips. “What are they?”

“Can’t really make heads or tails of most of them. I think this is a bunch of hands?” Keith said, pointing to a cluster of disembodied hand-looking things. Most other markings were abstract shapes and lines. He sank down to his haunches to point to one by the ground. “Clearest one is this wolf down here.”

“Looks like a lion to me.”

“Doubt anyone here a bajillion years ago could draw a lion, ‘cause they had no clue they existed.”

“I’m calling what I see, and that’s definitely more catty than wolfy.”

“Whatever.”

Lance squatted down behind him with his inner thighs resting against the outside of Keith’s, and tucked his chin into Keith’s shoulder, like whenever they rode his bike. “Maybe aliens drew these, after visiting Africa first.”

Keith responded with a quiet chuckle that was more of a huff of air through his nostrils. 

“Is this your favorite place to go?”

The question brought a chill of insecurity over Keith. It sank in that his favorite thing to do was come out in the middle of nowhere to stare at a wall. He nodded.

Lance’s chest pressed warm against his back. “It’s cool.” 

He was hugging Keith from behind and it was the first sign of affection Lance had initiated since… Since the time they had sex. Keith was just starting to get used to the new way that things were, with the tension and the distance. Now Lance was flipping it again, sneaking up all tender behind him and speaking softly in his ear.

“Hey?” Lance said, uncomfortable with Keith’s silence. He pressed a kiss into the corner of Keith's lips.

Keith considered holding his tongue and just letting the moment be. But fuck that. He didn’t have the self control not to chase an answer, even if it ruined things for himself.

“So… Are you done being freaked out by me, or…?”

Lance pulled away and stood up. Unsurprising. Keith rose to his feet as well, turning to face him.

“I'm not freaked out. I'm just… You're… Things…”

“How am I things?”

“Keith,” he muttered, a little exasperated.

“Look, I didn't mean to… Whatever made you… You should just say what I’m doing wrong to my face.”

“There's nothing wrong.”

“There _is_. You know how you’re being. When we’re alone, you change.”

Lance stood halfway in a beam of sun from above, illuminating his outline in white. Keith could see him casting around for words, but his mouth only stuttered soundlessly. 

“I don’t care if you don’t want me. I’m just not great at reading between the lines, or whatever. I need you to tell me what I’m missing here.”

Lance avoided his eyes, guilt carved into his face.

“You don’t know what I’m doing to you,” he whispered. Then the levy broke. Out gushed all the words he'd been holding in for days. “You don’t. I’m going to kill you. I mean—If we keep having sex—You’re gonna die from it. That’s what happens. It consumes your quintessence, and it doesn’t last forever. There’s no way around it, I can’t… You’re supposed to be prey.”

It took Keith a long moment to think back on the weirdness between them in the past few days within this new context. “That's it?”

“Yes? It's kind of big deal!”

“So… _Why_ are you telling me this?”

Lance’s eyebrows snapped together. “You asked me three times in a row!”

“And?”

“Do you not _believe me?_ ” 

“I do. I just don’t get it… ‘ _Your kind,_ ’” Keith raised one hand to put up air quotes around the phrase, “is definitely not supposed to just _tell me_ I’m being preyed on. This makes you the worst ‘ _predator_ ’—” Two fingers twitched into quotation marks again.

“Hey!”  

“—ever. Is making friends with Pidge and random people in the town part of a long con you just spoiled for yourself?”

“I jus—I _like them_ —It has nothing to do with you—”

“If you had an agenda all along, why did you just sabotage it?”

“ _I don’t want you to die,_ ” Lance snapped, raw and desperate.

Keith’s chest clenched so tight, it took a few seconds to remember how to speak. 

He never quite figured out how to externally care about someone. He would never think to make breakfast or take their shoes off for them. He never quite figured out why anyone should care about him either.

“So… you aren’t repulsed by me?”

Lance answered by grabbing the lapels of his jacket and bringing Keith into a kiss. Taken by surprise, Keith was pulled through the shaft of light as Lance stumbled backwards from the momentum of their lips crushing together. Lance’s back hit the canyon wall after a couple of steps and his hands came up to cup Keith’s face as they melted together, mouths moving slow and heavy for each other. 

Care poured out of Lance like it was larger than his skin, filling them both past the brim. Keith felt it in his lips, his fingertips, his chest pressing so close and so soft. He could feel how Lance had been torturing himself holding this in, keeping it to himself. He held Keith close with the ecstatic relief of someone cut from their bounds.

Lance’s thumb traced slow, heart-achingly affectionate circles in the spot behind Keith’s ear, and Keith understood why hell is ice. The chill between yourself and everyone else, the numbness you wake up and go to sleep with—It was the opposite of this. 

Dry soil crunched beneath their shoes as they made their way back out of the canyon beneath a pink sky, after a long time making out against petroglyphs. Keith’s skin still hummed everywhere Lance’s hand had brushed over his clothes, where it had soaked in every touch like parched earth. This amplified the bitterness over finding out sex with incubikills people. Apparently, any kind of Lance-related orgasm equaled death. He said Keith shouldn’t even jerk off while thinking of him, just in case.

Something brushed against Keith’s glove. Lance’s fingers slid into his palm, took hold of his hand. Keith let him. 

“Are you mad?”

“No? What?”

“I’ve been such an asshole to you.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, because it was true. “You had a reason for it.”

Lance did not let it slide. “You didn’t know that.”

“It’s fine. I am an asshole. I can take as much as I dish out.”

“You’re really not.” 

Keith responded with a hollow laugh and pulled them toward his bike. “I’ve been called a _little asshole_ by nearly everyone who’s had to spend time with me. By Shiro, lovingly. By other officers at the school, less so.” He passed Lance the black helmet. “By foster parents. Even by a nun, just once, when I was a kid. She prayed for forgiveness and begged god for patience right in front of me.”

He hoped Lance would smile at that, but he just looked sad. “I’m serious,” he said, “You didn’t argue with me, you never even brought it up. You didn’t try to come on to me anyway.” 

“That’s... not worth a pat on the back.”

Lance snorted at _that_. “It’s honestly the standard. Half the time, people just keep trying their luck, since they think I can’t help myself. That I’ll have to give in eventually. The other half—They ask me to leave if I’m not gonna… y’know.”

Something about the way he said it made Keith feel like Lance was testing the waters. Putting these cards on the table so that Keith could come out and say it now if he was thinking along those lines.

“Wait. Half and half means all the time. Are you bad at math or do you _always_ do this?”

“Yes and yes.” Lance plopped down side-saddle on his end of the bike. 

“You didn’t have the heart to finish what you started with anyone? _Ever?_ ”

His smile was strained. “I’m a mess.”

“And here I thought I was special.”

“You _are_. It hurt me too, when I was acting like that. I knew it wasn’t right.” He glared down at the helmet on his lap, fingers fidgeting aimlessly with it. “I just… didn’t know how to back off. I didn’t wanna disappear on you, not after everything that’s happened to you.”

Keith brushed his fingers over Lance’s hair, easing it off his damp forehead in one stroke. Lance leaned into his hand gracelessly, instinctively, like an affection-starved stray being pet for the first time. It was a little pathetic, and a feeling Keith knew sickeningly well. Only he never acted on his feelings as unashamedly as Lance did.

“Come on, let's go home.”

 

They curled up in Keith's bed, talking idly about the government’s involvement in the death of Marilyn Monroe. 

He dreamt of being out on the plateau with Lance again, but it was night. Their feet dangled over its edge. Their shoulders pressed together in comfortable silence until they fell asleep there, in the sand, underneath all the stars.

The sound of metal clinking around gently woke him. He didn’t need to guess what it was. He watched Lance mix together his honey and brown sugar mask every single day. Keith rolled out of bed and got dressed. 

He leaned on the doorframe to ask, “Does that actually make a difference?”

Lance’s face was a shiny brown mess. “You don’t see one?”

“Not really, no.” 

He huffed. “Well, _I_ am feeling better already. I like rituals.”

Keith hadn’t thought of it that way, but he did always see Lance’s mood lift just from being in the middle of his beauty routine. 

“You can tell me if I overstayed my welcome, you know.”

“What…?”

“If you want me to go, I get it.”

It was hard to take Lance seriously, between his unconvincing nonchalant tone and all the gunk covering him. 

“Where?”

“Back where I came from.”

“I already said I don’t want you to go.”

Lance hummed, then bent over the sink to wash his face. He wiped away the honey and sugar, then reached for a towel and patted it slowly, meticulously across his face to dry it up one tap at a time. It was a methodical patience Keith couldn’t imagine. He got frustrated just watching it.

“Actually,” Lance said, looking in the mirror and still patting diligently, “You didn’t say.” 

“Well, I don’t care if you stay.” 

Lance’s eyes flitted sideways to look at him and raise an eyebrow. “You don’t care at all?”

Keith shook his head. It wasn’t the most honest, but it was the most he could force himself to say.

“Would you care if I go?” Lance asked. Pat. Pat. Pat.

“I think so.”

Lance hummed again. He put the towel down and faced Keith in the doorway. He looked tired. For the first time, Keith noticed dark circles beneath his eyes and a rough texture on his skin.

“I don’t care either,” he said, the corner of his lips curling up. It was deeply unconvincing.

A low, dry “ _Ha!_ ” huffed out of Keith right away. Lance kissed him before he could say anything. He tasted like honey and sugar.

 

Just like that, everything felt so much better now. The four of them had dinner and video game nights at Hunk’s, they snuck into movie theaters and baked elaborate pastries Keith couldn’t even pronounce in Pidge’s kitchen. When they were alone Lance laid his head in Keith’s lap while they were on the couch and updated him on some celebrity’s fake baby conspiracy, he made Keith dance with him to the static-y R&B station the radio barely received, he nipped Keith’s ear and the soft skin behind it when they rode his bike into town and back, he snuck deep, melting kisses in empty grocery store aisles. 

It would’ve been perfect, if he could ignore the toll being taken on Lance. His hair fell flat, his tan turned sallow, his lips chapped and paled.

 

Keith’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He couldn’t get it right away because he was busy handing sample spoons of literally every type of froyo they had available to some grown ass man who couldn’t just pick a flavor to shovel into his mouth. He asked for some flavors _twice._ He hated this job so much.

Fifteen minutes later, he saw the text from Pidge. 

  


When the gang visited Keith at the end of his shift—First, Keith mentally stumbled over the fact that he had a gang of friends now—Lance breezed into the shop while Hunk waited outside with Pidge. He slapped his hands down on the counter and half-vaulted himself over it to give Keith a peck on the nose. Susan didn’t give him a word of greeting, barely even a glance as they left together.

He noticed Keith's eyes lingering on his face. Keith wasn’t sure if he should say anything. Lance wasn’t acknowledging it. If anything, he acted chipper than ever to compensate. 

“Pidge is going to Hunk’s house.” He held the door open for Keith and they stepped out into the warm afternoon. “They’re gonna build a robot that stabs the straw through capri sun for you. You wanna watch?”

“You’re not invited,” Pidge barked.

Hunk jumped in alarm, then apologetically added, “Yeah, it’s not very fun to watch at this stage, there’s literally nothing to see.”

“Besides, they’ve got stuff to do.”

“What stuff?” Lance asked Pidge.

She gave Keith a dry look and held it as she started walking backwards down the sidewalk, in the direction of Hunk’s home. 

Lance followed her eyes to Keith. “What’s she mean?”

“Tell you later,” he answered, wary of Hunk still standing by him. 

“What _does_ she mean?” Hunk echoed.

“Hunk!” Pidge called, already crossing the street without him.

“He’s going!” Lance shouted back. He pulled Hunk in for a goodbye hug.

“Bye, Keith!” Hunk said from over Lance’s shoulder.

Keith responded with a silent wave of his hand before Hunk pulled away and turned to chase after Pidge. Lance walked to where his bike was parked like it was second nature, without either of them saying a thing. They had habits and routines between them now. 

Keith’s eyes were pulled to the bend in his spine when he leaned over to pluck his helmet off a handle. The line of his torso when his arms came up to put it on. The sway in his hips when he walked to the other end of the bike. The swing of his leg when he mounted it. Dark blue eyes looked at him through the visor and their corners crinkled. He was smirking. 

_Caught staring._

Keith reached for his red helmet and didn’t say anything as he strapped it on. Lance sat expectantly on the back seat of the bike. Routine.

“Scoot up,” Keith said.

“Uh?” Lance barely inched forward.

“Sit in front. You can drive.”

“I don’t know how…”

“You scared?”

Lance scrambled into the front seat. “No!” 

Keith smiled, invisible behind his helmet, and pointed to each control Lance might need. “Clutch. Throttle. Front brake, touch lightly. Rear brake. Shifter. Gas. Ignition. Horn.”

Lance nodded confidently, as if he knew. Keith flipped the kickstand with the toe of his boot and put it in neutral for him before coming around to straddle the space behind him. He leaned over, covering one of Lance’s hands on the bar grip with his and letting the other one wrap around his waist. Lance flipped the switch to start and pressed the ignition without waiting for Keith to tell him so. Keith’s eyebrows lifted when the bike smoothly rumbled to life beneath them. 

“What now?”

“Squeeze the clutch and release the throttle.”

And they were off, a bit too fast for comfort, but Lance didn’t slow down. Instead, he sped up the moment they hit the highway. Despite that Keith could feel his abdomen tense fearfully, with the hand around his waist, every time the wheels hit a bump or uneven patch of road. But the cabin was an hour away from town and Lance relaxed within the first fifteen minutes of riding. They zoomed serenely down the familiar road home for about twenty minutes more—Until Lance swerved off the road. 

With a lurch that rocked their entire bodies, they peeled off the asphalt and over the sand. The bike shook so violently over the rugged, unaltered terrain of the desert that they both had to fight just to stay in their seat.

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Keith yelled in his ear.

“Offroading!” Lance called back, then whooped at the top of his lungs. 

He sped up more, their bodies still jostling every moment, the bike kicking up clouds of dust in their wake. Lance laughed into the air. This was stupid and dangerous, and probably going to wreck his bike and kill them, and actually _really fun_. Keith pressed into Lance’s back and reached forward so that both hands were on the handles over his. 

Lance complained, “Hey! Back seat driving!” 

Keith didn’t budge. They were heading straight toward the lip of a desert wash that Lance hadn’t seemed to notice in the sand. With his pinky and ring finger wrapped around the bar, Keith lifted the next three fingers to whip in the clutch lever. He rolled on the throttle with his other hand and released the clutch in the same movement. The front end of the bike reared up. Lance screamed and slipped backwards—His back would’ve hit the dirt if he wasn’t pinned between the bike and Keith gripping its bars. The back wheel cleared the obstacle and the bike dropped back to solid ground roughly after a small jump. 

“Cool!” Lance was laughing again. 

Keith laughed too, from excitement and all this energy thrumming through his veins. Pressed this close, he could feel Lance’s heart hammering in his chest. They hurtled across rocks and sand for a while longer. Keith only had to intervene with the steering twice to avoid some jutting stones and logs in their path. 

Mid-ride, Lance batted Keith’s hands away from the controls and pulled both levers to fully brake. They skidded to a stop, sand rising all around them. They were still miles from the cabin.

“What happened?”

Lance tugged his helmet off. “Look over there.”

A few feet off to the side, shrubs of wildflowers had sprouted out of the sand in patches of purple, white, and green. The endless pale background of desert they bloomed on magnified the vibrancy of their colors. Lance looked at them as if he’d spotted a unicorn.

“You’re such a kid,” Keith muttered, removing his helmet too.

“What? It’s a contradiction, isn’t it—Flowers in the desert?”

“Deserts _are_ a contradiction. Stifling hot and biting cold, bone dry and flash flooded…”

“Harsh and beautiful,” Lance agreed. “The desert’s grown on me.”

Keith wanted to say he liked it a little more too ever since Lance arrived. It seemed just a little bit more crisp and colorful. The sun shone less brutally. The stars sparkled a little brighter. Instead, he pressed a kiss into the side of Lance’s neck. Lance tilted his jaw to the side, making it easier for Keith to take the sensitive skin there between his lips.

The black helmet rolled off Lance’s lap and hit the sand with a muted thud. Keith dropped one foot on the ground to help the kickstand keep them balanced and to raise himself just enough to lean over his shoulder and capture his mouth. Lance’s head tipped back for him, welcoming it. 

They kissed in a hot, heady blur. Needier than the innocent tenderness they had restrained their physical affection to ever since they decided not to have sex. Keith already knew he should stop, but... He dragged a gloved hand up the inside of Lance’s thigh and Lance arched against his back. At the same time, he hummed a distinct “No” sound into Keith’s mouth. Keith pulled away from the kiss and dropped into his seat. 

He didn’t say anything. Lance didn’t either. They sat still in awkward, frustrated silence.

“Sorry,” Lance grumbled eventually.

Keith didn’t wait a beat before asking, “When’re you gonna move on to someone else?”

“What?”

“Why are we circling around it? It’s what has to happen.”

“I don’t want to leave you.” 

Ugh, did he  _ have _ to say it all vulnerable and lingering like that? Keith was trying to be practical here.

“Well, how things are going with me, you have to or you’re doomed.”

“It’s not you, Keith. I was always doomed. I told you I’ve never finished what I started with anyone.”

“You’re ridiculous. You need to do that to _live_. How do you function?”

“I don’t!” Lance caught Keith off guard with the helpless tremble in his voice. “I’m not normal and I keep running away to start over, but it happens every time.”

“What happens?”

“I don’t know how to keep having casual sex with the same person. I try, ‘cause I have to, but I _can’t_. I always care too much to go through with it.”

Keith’s eyebrows sank as he watched the tiny quiver in Lance’s shoulders. “Well… This time choose a person who’s better off dead. You’ll feel great about it.”

His shoulders crumpled and Lance’s head fell forward into his hands. “I’ve done that. Even _then_ —I had met his family and I couldn’t fathom doing that to them.”

“Ugh, Lance. Choose someone without a family then, no one would miss him.”

“I _did_. I’m _here_ in the same mess.”

Keith swallowed. “You came here because no one would notice if I was gone? You thought that would make it easy for you.”

“Well, it didn’t.”

Keith’s forehead slumped into the space between Lance’s shoulder blades, his eyes clenched shut. They’d hit a brick wall. There was no going past this without one of them ending up dead and the other alone. Not if Lance wouldn’t leave Keith.

His arms circled around Lance’s waist again, hugging him from behind. 


	4. Chapter 4

Susan didn’t offer Lance free ice cream the next time he kept Keith company at work. An hour after he came in and took a seat without ordering, she came out and asked, “Why are you still here?”

“Why are you?” Keith countered by reflex.

“Actually,” seeing the dark look on Susan’s face as she turned to Keith, Lance intervened, “I was about to leave, anyway. See you at Pidge’s.”

He waved goodbye with an apologetic shrug to Keith and a chipper “Ciao!” to Susan that she didn’t respond to.

The rest of Keith’s shift slogged by until he got off at four. He rode straight to Pidge’s house, unsurprised to find Hunk’s jeep already parked in the driveway. Inside, the sound of kitchenware clattering and the scent of something savory cooking filled the entire house.

“Pidge, the onions.”

“I’m _going.”_

Hunk was frying something in the kitchen while Pidge chopped onions.

“Hey,” Keith announced himself as he joined them.

“Keith! Get over here, you’re faster at this.” Pidge dropped the knife on her cutting board and stepped aside for him to take her spot. “Also, I’m crying.”

“Wow, Hunk’s a tyrant,” Keith said flatly, taking over for her.

“ _I_ didn’t make her cry.”

“Where’s Lance?”

Pidge set her laptop on the counter opposite them. “Upstairs.”

“Bugging ‘ _Colleen’_ ,” Hunk added.

“That’s nice.” It came out sounding dry the way Keith said it, but he meant it.

Pidge’s mom never saw anyone but Pidge anymore. She didn’t leave her room for anything, ever, except the days when the two worked together to fool case workers and concerned friends that Mrs. Holt was doing relatively fine. They were scared someone would report her as unfit to take care of her daughter.

Keith was sure that’s why Hunk went out of his way to come cook them dinner all the time.

“When’re we gonna do this at your place, Keith?” Hunk asked as Keith dumped onions into his simmering pot of deliciousness. “Cool, now peppers.”

“Never.” Keith reached for the bowl of peppers Hunk had set aside before he got there. “There’s no reason to come to a shack in buttfuck Egypt.”

“Not _enough_ buttfucking going on out there from what Lance looks like,” Pidge chimed in.

_“What?”_

Keith shook his head and kept his eyes on chopping peppers. “Just change the subject, Hunk. Please. Do it for me.”

Hunk, thank god, seemed very enthusiastic about not wanting to hear Pidge’s thoughts on their buttfucking situation.  “Uh. Okay. So, like… Were your parents scientists too? That why they lived out there?”

“Ha.”

“What?”

“No, my dad worked at a casino. He lived in the middle of nowhere ‘cause he was stupid or crazy.”

“What’d he do there?”

“Nothing.”

A series of thumps coming down the stairs put a pause in the conversation. Lance slinked into the kitchen seconds later.

“ _Uh_ , she loves them,” he gloated at Pidge. “Told you so.”

“Loves what?” Keith asked.

He reached for something on the counter behind Keith. “I saved you some.”

A slender arm swung around from behind and placed a plate next to the cutting board he was using. There were three crispy, brown croquettes on it. Lance’s chin nestled itself over Keith’s shoulder as he wrapped him up in a loose hug from behind. There was something surreal for Keith about that day, helping Hunk while Lance held him and Pidge played songs from her computer.

Just when Hunk was ready to feed them chicken fricasée, the kitchen went silent. A song ended and Pidge didn’t have another lined up. Lance let go of him.

She stared at the doorway, jaw hanging open. “Mom?”

Lance threw his hands in the air. “Sup, Colleen!”

Mrs. Holt stood at the doorway, wearing pajamas and a nervous little smile. Her slippers shuffled across tile to join them inside.

“I told Lance to shut the door behind him and he left it wide open.” She put a palm on Pidge’s shoulder and gave Lance a fondly miffed look across the kitchen. “He’s been pestering me to come eat with you over and over—and the smell’s been driving me crazy.”

“Sorry! I’m Hunk, by the way.” He peeled his oven mitt off and reached over the counter to shake Mrs. Holt’s hand.

“Oh, don’t you dare. Thank you for all the great food lately. It’s been so kind of you.” She then turned to Keith expectantly.

He swallowed. Hunk was new, but _Keith_ was a name she must have heard from her daughter long before now. He’d been coming in and out of this house for months, even slept in it, and never thought to go into Mrs. Holt’s room to say hello. He felt deeply ashamed of that, suddenly.

“Hey. I’m Keith.”

Mrs. Holt dropped her hand from Pidge’s back and came around to him. “Thanks for keeping Katie company all this time. And for helping her make new friends.”

Keith saw Pidge roll her eyes behind her mom.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have made them without her either.”

“She said you were close to Shiro.”

 _Like brothers_ , he told Pidge once. The sympathy on Mrs. Holt’s face made him wonder if that wording had been relayed to her.

“Um. Yeah.”

“You poor thing, I’m sorry.” She took Keith gently by the wrist, guiding him to face her instead of the counter, and she hugged him like a mother.

It was different than any pity hug he’d gotten after Shiro’s disappearance. She wasn’t hugging him because she thought he needed one. He could feel it in the way the side of her cheek sunk against his chest and in how her arms lingered around him like she just wanted to breathe there for a moment. _She_ needed this, and only from Keith. She wasn’t apologizing for what happened to Keith, she was saying, _I’m sorry,_ for needing to hold him right now.

He looked over her head a little helplessly and met eyes with Lance, who silently made a hugging gesture with his arms held out in front of him. Cautiously, Keith’s hands lifted from his side and closed around Mrs. Holt’s back.

 

* * *

 

They let time pass while they pretended to be normal. They gradually found their physical comfort zone, where they could soak in affection from each other without crossing the line. Kisses that didn’t burn and falling asleep holding hands. Lance apologized for it, but Keith didn’t feel anything missing.

“It’s fine, Lance. Seriously.”

On the cabin’s front porch, beneath a darkening pink and purple sky, Keith sat on the top step and Lance on the bottom one. He watched Lance trace shapes into the sand there. The sun’s hue dimmed enough that it was no longer searing white, but a deep gold they could watch comfortably as it dipped closer to the gradually silhouetting mountains on the horizon.

“What _was_ your dad doing out here?” Lance looked at Keith over his shoulder.

He shrugged. **“** He waited here.”

“For what?” Lance turned around to face him, sitting sideways on the bottom step.

“For my mom to come back. He thought, since this is where she saw him last, she might… Whatever.”

He leaned in closer, attention fully absorbed. “You said you never lived here.”

Keith’s eyes rolled skyward and he couldn’t hold back the bad mood in his voice, “Yeah, Lance, I never met my mom.”

“Sor- _ry!”_ Lance shot back with just as much attitude as he’d been given.

He _knew_ he was being a pill, but didn’t know how to stop himself. Keith grumbled, “Whatever, it’s fine.”

Lance’s eyes dropped back down to his lines in the sand. He didn’t ask another question and they fell into a grudging silence. Keith picked at a splinter on the porch. The sun was descending fast now, darkening the sky a little more each minute. The mountains on the horizon shifted colors, slowly.

“I remember living in a proper house with my dad,” Keith shared, unprompted. “I dunno, don’t think I was in it much.”

Lance turned and leaned toward him again.

“‘Cause most of my memories from back then are in the casino’s daycare corner, where people left their little kids while they gambled.”

Keith was often the oldest one there, and always the last to leave. The majority of his recollections were vivid images of being stuck there hours after it had closed, waiting for his dad’s shift to end.

“When I was nine, a well-meaning employee there called CPS to check on us. So my dad got to stop pretending he’d rather be raising me... and move back here, I guess? And I went to the group home.”

“Oh, the nuns?”  

Keith nodded. “The garrison held little fairs for us every year. Brought toy planes for us and water guns. I just wanted to live somewhere that didn’t make me go to mass everyday, so I signed up to be a cadet right when I turned twelve.”

“You’d still have to go back during breaks though, right?”

“Yeah, I hated them. So I signed up for all the summer programs too. They all thought flying must be my _dream_ , I’m working _so hard_ to be good at it—But I was actually just doing anything to avoid mass.”

With a laugh, Lance dropped down to rest his hands and chin on Keith’s knee while he listened. “You clearly turned out fine without it. Just hanging out with sex demons, no big.”

Keith huffed out a quiet laugh. “Hey, the demons were Pidge’s idea.”

“Whatever, you rolled with it. You’re still rolling with it.”

Keith looked down at him, feeling a fond smile growing on his face, and reached out to brush the pad of his thumb along Lance’s cheekbone. He couldn’t believe Lance’s past lovers had told him to go. How? Because of sex?

It’s not like Keith didn’t miss the sex. He did.

Still, not as much as he would miss waking up to the sound of Lance tinkering in the kitchen. He had no problem remembering what life with no one to fuck was like, before Lance, and making peace with that. But he hated remembering what it was like with no one there. He hated the thought of nights spent reading in silence without Lance there to mess with the radio while Keith tried to focus, without swatting away Lance’s attempts to pull him up to his feet for a dance. Keith hated remembering how he used to sit on the porch alone, night after night, without Lance laying his head over his lap and pointing up at constellations.

Just the feeling of living energy in his home, for once, had him happy to agree to any boundaries it took to make it work.

Then, for the first time after the night he accidentally summoned an incubus, Keith had a nightmare. It took place at the frozen yogurt shop, where all nightmares are born. The dream was just—Lance walked through the door. That’s all that happened.

The sun shone bright behind him and he looked perfect. His skin was warm and glowing, his eyes were bright, and his smile put the sunlight to shame. He was okay now. _Why’s he okay?_ Keith’s heart swelled from relief, then promptly imploded when the meaning of it sank in.

It wasn’t the kind of bad dream that jerks you awake, heart racing. He woke with a still, quiet dread. A slow guilt that dug its claws into Keith’s chest, made it hard to breathe. He didn’t get out of bed.

After a while, the door creaked open and the mattress squeaked beneath the weight of someone climbing on. A hand snaked over Keith's shoulder and nudged a hot Eggo waffle against his lips.

“Mnnf!” Keith didn't get the chance to complain, because the moment he opened his mouth to speak _—_ it got pushed right in.

He had no appetite after that dream, but nothing could be done now. He bit off a piece and turned to Lance with a glare as he chewed. Lance smiled with pale, chapped lips and eyes glittering despite dark circles sagging beneath them. The guilt clawed deeper. Lance’s attitude made it easy to pretend he was okay, but it was harder each day to ignore the physical signs of his starvation.

Keith swallowed thickly.  “Are you gonna sleep with someone else?”

The question burst out clumsy and awkward, but he’d never pretended to have social grace. Lance’s eyebrows scrunched together and his mouth parted in a silent, _Wha—?_

“I don’t care if you do,” he pressed on. Lance was like this because of him. Keith was holding him back.

Lance cocked his head to the side in incredulous silence.

“Are you…?”

“With _whomst?”_ Lance quipped in an exasperated, over-enunciated drawl. He pushed himself up to kneel on the bed and flung an arm out to gesture at the window with a half-munched waffle in his hand. “ _Whooompst?_ Look out there. We might as well be on a satellite in this cabin _—_ There’s no one around but _you._ For miles and miles.”

“I know. It’s not fair to you. You need other people.”

Lance scoffed. “You need them too.”

It took Keith a few seconds to understand what he meant. “That’s not—I’m not gonna die because I have no friends, okay. You need to… You’re gonna need to fuck someone else eventually.”

He shook his head. “I’m not like that.”

“Lance. It’s just your nature.”

That made him wince. “Please don’t say that.”

Keith was right, he knew he was right about this. Why did the wounded look on Lance’s face make him want to apologize?

“What’s gonna happen to you if you don’t?”

Lance’s eyes pinched shut. He tilted his head back and blinked up at the ceiling. “I _don’t know_ , Keith. There has literally never been an incubus that couldn’t or wouldn’t just fuck someone.”

“You don't know that.”

“Yeah, I do.” Lance’s face tipped back to look directly at Keith. “I've been asked enough times what the fuck is wrong with me every time I crawl back looking like this.”

He frantically blinked away tears jeweling the corners of his dark blue eyes. Keith didn’t know what to say or do, other than drop it. Unwilling to put thoughts or feelings into words, he settled for brushing his knuckles up along Lance’s arm. Lance took the invitation. He scooted close and wrapped his arms around Keith, buried his face in the crook of his neck. This was the moment to try to say something comforting.

“You’re gonna be late to class again, I think.” _What the fuck._

Lance gave a small shake of his head, the most he could manage from his position. “I shouldn’t go to the garrison anymore.”

“Something happen?”

“Nah. Just—I think they’re onto me. It’s harder to get away with anything now. Charm’s not working like it used to.”

“I still like you the same.”

Against the skin along the neck of his shirt, Keith felt Lance smile. Then he pulled away, and Keith saw how impish it was. “What, you _like_ me?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Yeah, you do,” Lance said dismissively.

He hooked a hand around Keith’s neck and brought their lips together. Keith responded with chaste, closed-mouth kisses. He wanted more, but it was hard not to get carried away when they tried. Lance, despite being the one who asked for this restraint, seemed to be struggling against it too. He could feel it in the way Lance’s fingers slipped up into his hair and his thumb rubbed yearning circles behind Keith’s ear.

“I _don’t_ want someone else,” Lance muttered into the kiss. “I can’t.”

“Okay,” Keith conceded.

They walked a strange line these days. Stranger than the zig-zagging, hot and cold one Lance had been taking before. They went in circles now. They danced around the inevitable, too hard-headed to accept a dead end in front of them. Lance didn’t want to leave Keith. Keith didn’t want Lance to leave either, but didn’t want to carry the guilt of starving him.

Lance laid down, resting his head a few inches next to the forgotten waffle on the sheets. He asked, “How come Colleen knew Shiro and not you?”

“ _Colleen_ ,” Keith repeated, still incredulous that Lance had crept his way onto first name terms with Pidge’s mom, “—adored Shiro, I think. He tried to drag me over there dozens of times, but I was a shit about not wanting to.”

He smirked up at Keith. “Teen you was far too bitter to spend time with a nuclear family that says grace before dinner?”

“That’s…” he paused to huff a short, dry laugh, “That’s actually exactly what it was. Shiro loved it, though.”

The smirk was displaced quickly by Lance’s eyebrows suddenly sinking, like he was hit by a concerning realization. He didn’t say anything, though.

So Keith nudged him. “What?”

“How come don’t you ever talk to Shiro’s parents?”

“Uh, because they’re in Peru.”

“Oh. Are they okay?”

“Dunno. Never met ‘em. His mom and dad were deported when he was sixteen. They begged him to stay behind, so he could send money and stuff back home.”

Maybe that was what pulled Shiro to Keith in the first place; seeing another kid without a home or a family at the garrison. It’s certainly what glued Keith to Shiro, when he realized there was another sort-of-but-not-quite-orphan, who didn’t even want to be there, making the best of what he got. And _fuck_. Keith mostly tuned out that grief to a low hum of white noise at the back of his mind, but the reminder that _Shiro_ _didn’t even want to be there_ made it screech like sudden feedback.

Lance propped himself up on one elbow, worry written over his face, and Keith dreaded being asked what was wrong. He knew it would set him off, he could feel it, and he would be an ass about it, then regret that when the fit passed. Keith could see the consequences of his own impulses laid out in front of him, but didn’t feel able to avoid them.

He didn’t ask. His other hand grabbed the middle of Keith’s t-shirt and tugged. Keith humored it and sank down until he curled up at Lance’s side. Up close, he couldn’t ignore the dark blue veins visible through the thinning skin beneath Lance’s eyes.

They laid in bed with the waffle until Keith had to go to work. He got on his bike and felt off-balance somehow. The ride into town was cold without someone’s arms around his waist.

When he came back after sundown, Keith hardly had a chance to close the door behind him before he got shoved against it. Lance’s mouth crushed against his at the same time that Keith’s spine hit the door frame. Lance nipped at his mouth, dragged his hips against Keith’s, and they both knew they’re not supposed to do this anymore. Not this hot, not this hungry.

Keith knew better than to go with it, but he did. He wriggled his shoulders against the door, shrugged off his jacket, let it slide away and hit the floor. It was harder and harder to continue giving affection only one drop at a time, to resist touching, to hold back from sharing the energy  that was inside of him, clawing out of his skin.

Lance tore apart from the kiss and dipped his face into the crook of Keith’s exposed neck, fingers clutching at the hem of his shirt. His knuckles grazed over the sensitive flesh below Keith’s belly button as teeth clasped around equally sensitive flesh at his throat. Keith tipped his head back against the door and shuddered, feeling like every hair on his body was prickling up and buzzing.

“Sorry, I—” Lance muttered without pulling away.

“It’s fine—”

“—I was alone all day—”

“—All good, keep going—”

“—I’m gonna hurt you—” And that seemed to be the trigger that steeled Lance’s resolve once more. He took a step back from Keith. “I already did. _Twice_.”

“I don't care about my shitty, bitter soul. Or quintwhatever. You can have it. All yours.”

Lance’s hands fidgeted in mid-air, seemingly fighting against himself to touch Keith. “I _can't_ —”

“Who says I even need a soul? Susan gets by without one.”

“Hey, Susan's nice.”

“To you. Just because she wanted to fuck.”

Lance took another quick step back, as if he’d been bitten. And now Keith felt like an asshole even though he was right. He quickly added, “I didn't mean that's the only reason…”

“It is, it's fine. I know that.” Lance shrugged one shoulder, attempting to be careless, but his eyes gave him away.

“No, it's not. It's not fine, just call me a dick because it was a dick thing to say,” Keith said, irritable and distracted.

He could practically feel his abandoned skin whining for touch. The desire for it sat there, laced with frustration and a lingering pleasure.

“Nah, you’re right. That’s how it goes for me.” With an awkward, hollow smile, Lance backed away into the dingy living room.

Keith trailed behind him with gritted teeth. “I was trying to shittalk Susan, not _you.”_

He couldn’t make sense of what Lance wanted, especially knowing that he was denying himself of what he needed. Did he throw himself onto Keith just now as a plea for help? Or was it simply a reflex for him to entice?

“You know we’re doomed, right?” Lance threw himself over the couch in a fit of theatrics. He posed across it, not unlike an anguished noble in a classical painting. “One of us is going to die.”

“Always with the drama,” Keith mumbled as he stepped on the cushions around Lance’s legs, and took a seat above him, perched on the back of the couch.

“Oh, that’s good coming from you.” Lance threw his wrist over his brow, hiding his eyes from Keith and amplifying the dramatic pose. “Don’t blame Susan, either. I don’t think she’s consciously doing it.”

It bothered him so much that Lance was used to being treated like he was only almost a person. But he didn’t know how to convince him they were wrong. Lance _wasn’t_ human. He had so much more to give than that, and no one wanted it after he stopped being a sexual fantasy for them. He would let himself die so that they can live, and what did that ever bring him?

Keith clenched his jaw. Lance didn’t even want to lash out at them. Didn’t want Keith to do it for him.

His nails scratched at the frayed back of the couch. “Lance…”

One dark blue eye peeked out from behind his wrist.

“Don’t know how to ask for this without sounding like a nightmare.”

The eye narrowed. “Why do you wanna die?”

“Why do you?”

“I don’t. Trust me, I really want you—All the time—It’s kind of agonizing.” Lance pulled his arm away from his face to look up at Keith. “But like, not at all worth it? Fuck, everything is so frustrating with me.”

Keith couldn’t argue that, so he said nothing.

Lance sighed. “Ugh, you didn’t ask for this.”

That one, he could argue. “Yeah, I did. I went through an entire, semi-meticulous ritual to ask the universe for you. I poured my blood out just for you.”

“You didn’t even know what you were getting. You and Pidge are just weird and bored. You were probably actually hoping to rise Shiro from the dead or something.”

Couldn’t argue any of those either.

Lance stared up at him. Then sat up. “Oh my god, you _were.”_

“It’s fine. I wound up liking who I got.”

Lance looked off to the side with an expression Keith couldn’t quite read, just for a moment. In a flash, a smarmy curl of one side of his mouth replaced it. “Cool. Nice to be in the baddest clique in the universe.”

“What clique?”

Lance’s hands gestured in the air as he spoke. “Shiro was a legend, teachers don’t shut up about it at the garrison. You’re a prodigy, students don’t stop talking about it. Pidge is too, she’s the smartest person in any room she walks into.”

“I’d say she’s meeting her match with Hunk.”

“Mhm, Hunk too. Point is: Brilliant people are magnetized to each other. And I’m here like…” He made a vague motion, just lifting his palms up and flopping them back uselessly on the couch.

Meanwhile, Keith didn’t think _magnetized_ described them at all. “We wouldn’t know Hunk at all if you didn’t start talking to him and forcing him on us—repeatedly.”

He thought Hunk was great _now_ , but Pidge and Keith bristled and stopped just short of hissing the first few times Lance had brought the newcomer around. Lance noticed, he wasn’t dumb. He kept bringing Hunk into their circle on purpose, like he knew somehow that he would make it better. Or maybe he didn’t know that. Maybe he just loved people, and wanted more than two friends, and improving Keith and Pidge’s ability to form friendships was just a side effect of being around Lance.

“Yeah. So what? You’re all full of talent and—and _I’m_ empty _._ You’re all gonna notice that.”

Lance’s voice had gone soft and an understanding clicked into place for Keith.

He leaned forward, resting his arms across his knees. “If you’re supposedly empty, then what am I?”

“A real person. An extraordinary one on top of that, even people who hate you admit it. Everything with me goes nowhere. I’m _always_ going in stupid circles, even when I try not to.”

“Not like I’m any better. Look where I am.” Keith briefly swept his hand out to indicate the dilapidated shack he squatted in.

“That’s not the same _at all_. You don’t get that _you_ have all the potential in the world and make the _choice_ to isolate yourself?” Lance clutched his own shirt by the chest, unable to stop letting out what he thought now that he’d started. “I’m here, caring so much and desperately trying to offer something, but I don’t have— _I_ might as well be a thing—Only thing I’m good at is being sexy and I can’t even do that. I’m just an inconvenience when I can’t be what I was summoned for. I want to do more, but I...”

He didn’t even sound sad anymore, just confrontational. He held Keith’s gaze like a challenge. He was trying to open the door for a rejection, again. Lance was still afraid it was imminent and trying to at least control when it would happen.

Sometimes (all the times), Keith really enjoyed telling him how wrong he was about pretty much everything.

“Alright. Listen. Pidge and I didn’t have a single friend. We’re only friends with each other now because there was literally _no one_ else in the _world_ we could talk to about what happened to us. _That’s_ what it took just to get close.” He paused for a beat before bringing up the next point. “Pidge’s mom is _cooking_ for her.”

Lance merely blinked. “Um. Okay?”

“She hasn’t wanted—or, well, been able to get herself to—leave her bedroom since the accident.”

“She came out a few times when we were cooking,” Lance attempted to correct.

“No. You weren’t here before, you don’t get it. She’s _never_ taken a step outside before you got here. She lived off takeout boxes Pidge brought to her room.”

“It’s only because I started barging in there to show the pinterest picture of the recipe we’re doing and leave the door open to annoy her with the smell.”

“Exactly. You helped her want to get out of bed and... do stuff.”

“It wasn’t hard work, just constant bugging. It could’ve been because of you or Pidge, anyone could do it.”

“But we didn’t!” Keith countered so fast, he nearly cut Lance off, “You’re the only one who thought to do it. We were all stagnant before you and we are all becoming _people_ again because of you.”

Lance didn’t say anything. He gazed up at Keith with an expression of such open heartache that it made him uncomfortable. It felt like seeing something private, something he wasn’t supposed to find out in the open like this. Lance’s shoulders trembled and Keith was struck with terror that he might begin to cry.

He did not cry. Slowly, he rose—one foot on the ground, and one knee bent on the couch—until his mouth found Keith’s. All that talk made his lips irresistible, it seemed. Keith didn’t object. He sunk into the kiss, slid down the back of the couch until he was practically in Lance’s lap.

He didn’t waste time with attempting to stifle passion. He pulled Keith against him and ran the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, spiced with the taste of a bad decision and asking to be let in. Keith didn’t need to be asked. His entire body burned from not having kissed the way they were tonight for what seemed like ages. This was so good. So right.

After a few minutes, Lance trailed his fingertips down Keith’s side in a touch so gentle it made him shudder, even with the fabric of his shirt between them. His hands settled dangerously low on Keith’s hips, where they pulled him closer, right up against him. Keith was already hard just from making out, and Lance could definitely feel it, and he didn’t have the sense to be embarrassed about it.

They broke the kiss together, both gasping the same air between them as ragged breaths fluttered against each others lips. Their eyes locked and examined each other.

“Just one more time,” Keith pleaded in a whisper. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

He could practically see Lance mentally fighting against himself in the moment he thought about it. Keith could see him wanting it so badly, and not wanting it, and fearing it.

“You don’t have to,” Lance finally answered.

“I want to.”

Finally, he cast his eyes down and his hands slid away from Keith’s waist. That was probably a no. Keith tried not to frown.

Then, Lance took his shirt off. He dropped it on the floor and fell back until he was lying flat on the couch. Keith yanked his own t-shirt off in a blur and bowed to kiss Lance again, exhilarated that this could actually be happening.

Goosebumps prickled everywhere Keith’s bare flesh touched Lance’s. That delirious buzzing sensation was back. It had Keith’s skin screaming for the touches he’d been dreaming of every night. Did Lance feel like this? Did he feel it _more?_

Keith lips trailed away from his mouth, along his sharp jaw, down his arched neck. He paused at Lance’s clavicle, where his tongue traced hot little patterns on the skin beneath. Lance gasped and bucked his hips against Keith’s. They could feel how hard both of them wear through their jeans, but not much else through the layers of thick material. Lance scarcely managed to contain a whimper as Keith timed the moment his fingers popped the button of his jeans open to the moment his tongue found his nipple. He gave it a gentle suck as the zipper dragged down, which pulled a shaky, breathless sound out of Lance that made Keith’s blood run hot beneath his skin.

He didn’t know when, or if, he’d ever be allowed to do this again, so he took his sweet ass time with Lance. He gave his other nipple similar attention while his hands worked on sliding Lance’s jeans past his hips and over his thighs, inch by inch. Then back to his neck for a couple of minutes to taste and bite and suck at the skin there. The only sound in the musty room was their breathing, heavy and harmonized.

Wait. He remembered Lance being more talkative than this the two times they’d done this before.

“Hey.” Keith’s hand cupped his jaw and turned his face so they were eye to eye.

Lance looked flushed, but spaced out. Keith dragged a hand along his erection, wondering if the roughness of his glove was an interesting feeling through the fabric of Lance’s underwear.

“Yeah?” he said, running his other fingers along the elastic waistband as Lance squirmed beneath his touch.

Lance nodded and lifted his hips off the cushions to help Keith pull his boxers out of the way. As he did, Keith’s thumb stroked over his sallow cheek, down to the soft corner of his lips. Lance’s mouth opened at the touch of his fingertip. His front teeth closed around the edge of the black glove and tugged it past the knuckle with one sharp jerk of his chin. God, the effect Lance had on him was embarrassing. Keith throbbed inside his jeans at the image. Mesmerized, he watched Lance angle his head and do it again to the index finger.

Keith’s hardness pulsed again, aching, and his patience broke. He tore the glove off himself, then spat heavily into his bare palm without a trace of shame. That dripping hand wrapped around Lance’s cock and stroked, spreading the wetness up around the head and all the way down to the base. Lance’s cry of relief was an aphrodisiac. Keith’s body thrummed with that intoxicating static under his skin.

Lance rolled his hips up into the relentless rhythm of Keith’s pumping fist, dazed and needy and gasping. “Keith…”

“Mmhm?”

“I want,” he half-moaned, half-said, and Keith knew he was doomed to give him whatever it was he wanted when he asked like that, “I want yours.”

His hands slid up Keith’s thighs and fingertips hooked just beneath the waist of his jeans on both sides. Keith let go of Lance to undo his pants in record time and Lance pulled his jeans and underwear down in one motion, just enough to be out of the way. He spat unceremoniously into his hand again and gave Lance a tiny smirk as he wrapped it around both their dicks at once. It immediately became really difficult to keep that face straight because, holy shit, they were so warm and so hard.

Precum heavily leaked from both of them, which made it easier to slide together inside Keith’s hold. His toes curled, his thighs tensed, his hips ground down. Lance leaned his head back with a rapturous sound and thrust upward to help from underneath. He lost himself in the rhythm of their dripping cocks sliding together, in the waves of need crashing over him with every stroke, each one stronger than the last.

 _Everything_ felt so much stronger than the first time, now that there was more than desire between them. Lance with his back arched, eyes closed and lips parted, trembling, sweating—It wasn’t just hot, it was breaking Keith’s heart that this may be the last time he saw it. And _this_ , this amazing shit that had Keith speechless and swollen and dizzy with pleasure, was going to make Lance better. It was going to give them a little more time together.

Droplets escaped from the corners of Lance’s clenched eyes.

The sight brought Keith down to reality enough to slow down and murmur, “Hey… _Hey._ ”

“Sorry.” Wet eyelashes fluttered open and Lance gave an embarrassed smile.

 _I would die for him_ , Keith thought, completely unprompted.

“I’m okay. Look, I’m fine. Everything’s fine, it’s so good…” His free hand stroked Lance’s head, smoothing his messy hair.

Lance clung to his hand. He gazed at Keith with an expression far too tender for the next thing he did; He brought his other hand up to his lips and licked a messy stripe from the base of his palm to the tips of his fingers. Keith forgot how to breathe. Lance’s hand closed over the head of both their cocks, partially overlapping with Keith’s.

They moved together now, slowly working back up to a deliriously good flow of friction between hard, sensitive flesh and hips snapping rhythmically. Keith stared downward. He couldn’t look away from their fists twisting in unison.

Lance never let go of the hand by his face. He turned his cheek to leave wet kisses against Keith’s wrist in between heavy, stuttering breaths. That had as much of an effect on Keith as their hands. Every touch of Lance’s lips sent chills dripping like raindrops down his spine. It left Keith freezing and burning, sweating and shivering.

It really took no time at all for them pump, thrust, and gasp their way through that haze of tangled, messed up feelings. Keith could feel himself losing the coordination he’d managed to scrape together as he bucked erratically into their hands. He could feel Lance getting close too, his nails sinking into the back of Keith’s hand by his cheek and breath coming out in constant whines.

He leaned down and caught Lance’s mouth in a deep, heady kiss. Their eyes locked in a flare of heat as their lips broke apart, though their foreheads stayed together.

The heat rose. The world dimmed. All breath left Keith’s body, torn from his lungs in a violent gasp. Come splattered, warm and cathartic, against both their stomachs. He arched upwards, shaking, and threw his head back. His eyes rolled back, too. His jaw fell slack. Everything went black. He was unconscious by the time he hit the floor.

 

* * *

 

“Keith? … Keith!”

A voice called him. It was muffled and distant, like someone trying to shout underwater.

 

* * *

 

Keith opened his eyes and only saw burning white. He clenched them shut again, groaning in annoyance. Everything hurt. Pain burned inside the muscles of his neck, between his shoulders, in his legs. His mouth was dry.

His eyes squinted open once more, this time dragging a hand up to shield them from the desert sun glaring through the window. Keith was on the floor by the couch, twisted in a strange position. Lance fucking left him here?

Keith got himself on his feet with a groan, every single body part complaining to him the entire way through. At least Lance tucked him back into his pants. He didn’t zip them, though. Keith pulled the zipper and did the button on last night’s jeans on the way to the kitchen, but Lance wasn’t there.

He turned and dragged his feet into the bedroom, then cracked the door to the bathroom open. Lance wasn’t there either.

There was only one other room in the cabin. Keith went down to the basement. It was empty, too.

He burst through the front door of the cabin and stepped out into the vast, open desert. His bike was still parked outside with both helmets.

Lance was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

Hunk cornered him on the sidewalk outside of his job later that week. “Hey! Why haven’t you been answering our texts?”

Keith didn’t even see Pidge behind him. He only heard her demand, “Where’s Lance?”

She stepped around Hunk, puzzled. Keith shook his head at her.

“He’s _gone?”_ she shouted.

 _“What?”_ Hunk did not shout, but managed to sound more distressed anyway. “He didn’t even say goodbye?”

“He didn’t,” Keith said.

 _“What happened?”_ Pidge was still shouting and drawing nosy looks from pedestrians.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Maybe he got kicked off the exchange program,” Hunk speculated. “He was skipping class a bunch.”

“Right. That’s probably it,” Keith answered in the least sarcastic tone he could muster. It wasn’t great.

He gave Pidge an _I’ll tell you later_ look.

Later wound up being on her living room floor with his legs thrown across the couch and his back flat on the rug.

“Everyone I have ever been attached to disappeared on me,” he muttered to the ceiling. “And it keeps happening.”

His mom. His dad. Shiro. Lance.

“We know how to get Lance back here. We summoned him once, we can do it again.” Pidge’s response was purely practical.

Keith loved that about her.

There was something immediately soothing about having someone at his side who could tell him what to do. Someone who could process details, coordinate them into a plan, and say it would work with all the confidence in the world. Keith could not do _any_ of that while he felt like everything he had was burning. It struck him how much he needed her. How alone and pointless he’d been before this teenage girl chased him down and dared him to call her crazy.

He wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. You can’t just tell people you love them out of the blue.

The scratch of slippers shuffling across the floor pulled their attention up to the hallway. Keith quickly took his feet off the couch. Mrs. Holt came into the living room to find Pidge cross-legged in front of her laptop and Keith beside her with his knees drawn up to his chest.

“Oh! Hello, Keith... Where is Lance?”

The click of the mantle clock filled the awkward silence that followed.

Keith eventually got the words out, so slow it was like he forgot the mechanics of his throat. “He’s… not here… anymore.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“He’s gonna come back,” Pidge offered immediately upon seeing the broken look on her mother’s face. “It’s temporary.”

“But…” Mrs. Holt shook her head several times in a row. “I talked to him days ago. He didn’t say anything about leaving. He didn’t _say goodbye_. It doesn’t make _sense_.”

“Mom,” Pidge jumped to her feet and took hold of her mother’s arms. “Mom, listen…”

Keith put his head down to rest his forehead against his knees. He tried to fight off the sting behind his eyes while Pidge whispered made up excuses to her mother, trying to soothe her out of an emotional nosedive that wasn’t entirely about Lance.

On the next full moon, Keith slit his wrist. It dripped deep red into the same Betty Crocker measuring cup from the first time they did this. Pidge used the same stick of chalk to draw the same pentagram in the same spot on the floor. She lit the same candles around them and she waited for Keith to finish bleeding.

He winced through the burning throb of pain at his wrist as he wrapped what was left of their roll of gauze around it. He let Pidge pour the blood into the bowl of water at the center of the pentagram. That was still the coolest part, and some part of him was annoyed she got to do it twice. But she had ( _conveniently_ ) convinced him it was best not to change any variables.

Kneeling across from each other, they closed their eyes and thought of what they wanted.

They waited. Nothing happened.

“It’s been twice as long as it took last time,” Keith eventually muttered.

Pidge shushed him. “So what? We have all night.”

Keith groaned out loud. She was right, though.

They waited.

Keith thought about how unbearable the last few days had been. Driving his bike alone on long, empty roads. Coming back to an empty cabin in the middle of nowhere. That stupid grey rock still in the shower. It was going to stay there forever, just in case. Just like the boxes of all the stuff his dad left behind did. All the unwanted things that weren’t worth taking with him. Keith would wait here for as long as it took, because it was the last place Lance had seen him. It’s the first place Lance would think to look if it occurred to him to return.

He tried not to think about how that was the same thing his father had been doing. Isolating himself in the last place he’d seen Keith’s mom, hoping a day would come when she retraced her steps to him.

The bowl rattled on the concrete floor. The candles had already blown out by the time Keith opened his eyes.

“Lance?” Pidge said in the dark.

No answer. The lights of the cellar flicked on by themselves.

The bowl on the floor was empty. The chalk was gone. But no one stood there. Keith’s head whipped to the light switch. Lance wasn’t there.

With one hand on the switch, stood a woman with choppy black hair and sharp grey eyes. Even to Keith, her face was stunning. A chill dropped like an ice cube down his spine.

“Who’re _you?”_ Pidge said.

Instead of answering, she looked up the basement stairs with a deep curiosity. She climbed up and left them down there without a word.

“Did I fuck up?” Pidge asked in a small voice.

Keith listened to the floorboards creak beneath footsteps above them. “I dunno, what were you thinking of?”

“My mom, for a minute there.”

They failed. Keith needed to breathe. He needed to stop just inhaling over and over.

He grit his teeth, clenched his fists, and forced a long exhale out of his lungs. He counted breaths as he climbed up the stairs, trying to control them from shaking. He found her in the living room, glaring at the pile of moving boxes. His chest felt like it was caving in beneath his skin.

She fixed that look on Keith. “Where’s Esteban?”

“I don’t know. Looking for you.” His mind was such a wildfire of thoughts that Keith found it strange his voice came out sounding so even.

Her eyes studied his face for a long, awkwardly intense moment while it dawned on her. _“Keith?”_

He nodded.

“He _left you?”_

He didn’t know what to say. He nodded again.

A look of unmistakable terror struck her hard, just for a split second, before she suppressed it. “How long?”

Having the answers for once felt strange to him. “When I was nine.”

She let out an audible breath. “ _No._ ”

“What did you think was gonna happen?” Keith gripped his own elbows tight. “You left first.”

“I stayed as long as I _could_. Longer than I should have.”

Seeing the roll of Keith’s eyes, his mother added, “Both of us could not have survived if I didn’t leave.”

He stared at her, awed and devastated. A silence stretched taut between them.

It was a struggle to push words past the knot in his throat. “You’re a succubus?”

There were so many questions Keith had that only his parents could answer. About his mother, about his father, about himself. Now, everything that had been hazy drew harshly, jarringly into focus.

She blinked, with one eyebrow furrowed slightly deeper than the other. **“** Your father didn’t tell you? How did you know to summon me?”

“I was trying to get _Lance!”_

“You know _Lance?”_

 _“You_ know him?”

“Every lilin knows about him. He’s…” she trailed off, trying to grasp for words that wouldn’t sound too unkind.

“Not the only one to fall for humans, apparently,” Keith finished.

“I loved your father,” she admitted. Her voice sounded strained. “But I wouldn’t die for him.”

“What about me?”

He had a stupid, childish wish that she would hold him. But she stayed right where she was with her arms at her side. Nothing in her eyes or her movements implied the thought of reaching out had even crossed her mind.

“You were for _him_. Since I couldn’t stay, but I could… leave a part of me.”

He glared at her. His mouth fell slack and he ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, punctuated with bitter nods. “Okay. Great.”

Keith turned his back to her and stormed out of the cabin. The door slammed behind him while he was already stomping down the porch steps. He strapped his bike helmet on with trembling hands and accelerated off in the opposite direction of the distant, diffused lights of the town. He went out into the desert on his own.

It was dark, but it was a full moon. Keith convinced himself it was bright enough out to go full throttle. Driving his bike through the night felt like flying. He needed the comforting press of the helmet around his head, the calming rush of adrenaline to his system, the sense of control in his hands, the roaring in his ears to drown out his thoughts.

Muscle memory steered him toward his favorite place to go. He knew the path so well, it didn’t worry him that he couldn’t see very far ahead of the headlight. He knew when to jump over washes in the sand, where to swerve past ditches. He dismounted at the entrance to the slot canyon with the petroglyphs.

Keith had to grasp the sandstone walls to feel his way through in the darkness at some points, but pools of moonlight shining through the cracks above were always within his view. He followed the trail of natural spotlights deeper in, until a figure stepped into one of the moonbeams ahead.

“This is insanely dangerous,” his mother said.

“How’d you get here?”

The full moon’s shine reflected off the peaks of her cheeks and her dark grey irises in a way that seemed impossibly bright. “You summoned me with your own blood. I can find you.”

“But, _how_ did you _get here_ faster than I did?”

“I’m not human, Keith. I can get anywhere faster than you, no matter what you’re riding.”

That didn’t add up. He thought of the times he left Lance in the cabin, unable to get to town. “Lance couldn’t do anything humans can’t.”

“Because Lance takes barely enough quintessence to keep himself functional. Not even that, most of the time. His abilities will never reach what the rest of us can do if he keeps rejecting what he is.”

Keith’s voice came out softer than he expected when he asked, “How many people have you killed?”

“I am very old. And I am very capable.” Her response came quick, clear, and unashamed. “I consumed so many souls in my life that I had enough quintessence to spare to make a deal with a witch.”

“For what?”

“A child with a human.”

Keith’s mind reeled with the onslaught of ridiculous, life-changing information. Answers to questions he had quietly resigned himself to never knowing abruptly thrown in his face and, oh, also witches are a real thing and directly connected to him. He steadied himself by lashing out.

“Well, you said it was for him and he didn’t even want me,” he snapped. “He dumped me into the system so he could keep trying to reconnect with you, wherever the fuck you were.”

“I never thought that would—I thought he’d be happy.”

“It’s the thought that counts, I guess,” he grumbled.

“Keith, I traded nearly _everything_ I had to have you.” An abrupt anger broke through her voice at his lack of understanding. “You have to see why I could never stay with you. You would be surrounded by deaths that all lead back to you.”

“Yeah. Cool.”

“Fine,” his mom huffed.

“Okay.”

_“Great.”_

“Also, that witch totally cursed your demon baby.” Keith looked at the wall where the cave drawings should be. He couldn’t see them in the moonlight. “‘Cause no one has ever loved me and stayed with me. The universe doesn’t let it happen.”

“I can help you. And Lance.”

A twinge of hope plucked at the strings in his heart.

He turned to her and the urgency in his own voice took him by surprise when he said, “You can bring him here?”

“No. I can’t.”

His mom stepped forward, out of the shaft of moonlight and into the darkness. Somehow, he could still see the sparks in her eye as she said, “But I can get you there.”

 

* * *

 

Pidge had been filled in on the plan long ago by the time Keith got out of the canyon, on his bike, and all the way back home.

“Don’t go in there.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him away from the door to his room. “She’s getting the ritual ready.”

“A ritual. In my room.”

Pidge nodded, bringing him to the living room. “Blood, water, and fire.”

“The same recipe for Lance?”

“Not a recipe.”

“Whatever. That’s what gets me to the underworld?”

“No. That’s what gets you out of it. Take off your jacket.”

He did, but not without a confused squint at her. He hadn’t noticed the odd assortment of things scattered over the couch until Pidge picked up Lance’s jacket, which had been draped over the arm.

She handed it to him and he put it on without needing to be told. “What does wearing his jacket do?”

“Krolia said there’s four gates once you descend. To get through them, you’ll have to pay the oneiroi.”

“Since when are you on first name ter—Nevermind, pay in what?”

She shrugged. “Bartering your treasured things.”

“Do I look like I have a treasure chest somewhere?” Keith asked, voice hard and flat.

Pidge threw the same tone back at him in her reply, “Not literal treasures, moron. Things you treasure.”

Keith squinted at her, again.

“It’s fine, I made some educated guesses and gathered some stuff.” She plucked a ziplock bag with a cookie in it off the makeshift table in the living room. “The snacks Hunk made us.”

“There’s only one left!” he complained.

Pidge smacked his arm out of the way so she could slip the cookie into the pocket of Lance’s jacket. “I didn’t know we’d need them, okay!”

The cushion springs groaned beneath both her feet as she jumped up onto the couch, stopping to stand just a couple of inches above Keith’s eye level. She took her glasses off, hunched over a bit to clean them with the hem of her sweater, then placed them on Keith’s face. Strangely, they fit—Not oversized on him the way they were on her. Their prescription didn’t seem to be too far off from normal either.

Pidge snorted at the sight.

“What are you doing?” Keith removed the glasses with a roll of his eyes and tried to hand them back.

She wouldn’t take them. “Bring them with you.”

“These aren’t even mine. Why would they think I treasure this?”

Pidge grabbed his wrist with both hands and used them to wrestle it backward, maneuvering the glasses back onto Keith’s face. “Because—you don’t even lock your front door, Keith.”

He blinked, confused.

She explained, “You don’t treasure any _things,_ do you? You just have people. And things that remind you of them.”

The couch creaked again as she bent both knees to pick up a black motorcycle helmet from the middle cushion. She slipped it on over Keith’s head, careful not to jostle the glasses on his face.

God, he looked stupid. Pidge snorted again.

“Are you fucking with me?”

“No! Can you think of anything better to bring?”

He couldn’t.

Something creaked behind them. Keith and Pidge both turned around at the noise to find his mom leaning against the half-open bedroom door. She had no reaction whatsoever to Keith’s ridiculous getup.

“It’s ready for you,” she said with a beckon before disappearing back into the room.

Keith took a step toward the door, but Pidge’s fingers closing around his hand stopped him. He paused and watched her step down from the moth-eaten couch. She took his other hand too, turning him in a slow circle to face her completely.

Eyes the color of sandstone and bare wires glared up at him. “I know where you’re going and I’m not afraid to drag you out of there. So come back, okay?”

She was so good at reacting to fears with direct plans of action. She was so good. Pidge crashed against his chest, hugging him tight and desperate. All the pain over how reuniting with his mother was nothing like his dreams went numb. It felt irrelevant.

 

* * *

 

Candlelight flickered across old dents and scuff marks on the walls of Keith’s bedroom. A bright red pentagram stained his light sheets. A scent with a metallic tang hung in the air.

Keith closed the door behind him and asked, “Whose blood is that?”

“Mine,” his mom answered, though the exposed skin of her arms showed no cuts.

It was embarrassing to stand alone with her like this; wearing glasses and a helmet and a hoodie two sizes too big. She had him lay down on the bed, clunky and awkward. Keith blinked up at a spider crawling across the ceiling.

“Did your father give you my knife?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah. When he told me he was leaving town.” He unsheathed the blade from his belt to show her.

“I’m glad you kept it. Make sure this is what you give at the first gate.”

Instinctively, Keith clutched it closer. “ _No_ —It’s—Dad didn’t leave any pictures behind, he probably didn’t think I would end up here.”

“Do as I say. You won’t be allowed through the gate if what you have is not enough.” His mom busied herself pouring water into a bowl as she spoke. “There is no leeway. If your offering is rejected, you won’t make it anywhere near Lance. I _know_ this one will be accepted.”

He frowned at the ceiling. “Fine.”

“Now, go to sleep.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You have to. That is the way in.” She brushed Keith’s arms out of the way and set the bowl on his stomach.

He put the knife back and grabbed the bowl by the sides to hold it steady. “The whole _going to hell_ thing has me a _little_ on edge here. Dunno if I can.”

She kneeled at his bedside. “Did you know that the original lilin were night terrors?”

“No.”

“They could only seduce humans in dreams. We have since evolved to something more powerful than that, something that can walk the earth. But still, our home is not in the realm of the dead, it is in the realm of dreams.”

“Why did Lance call it hell?”

“Most people would call any place with demons in it hell. And the realms of death and dreams are not far apart from each other. We are connected by the same sea. Humans who pass away must first pass through sleep in order to reach the underworld. It is what connects the earthly realm to ours. The ancient Greeks had a word for the state of unconsciousness between dreaming and death—κῶμα—a deep sleep induced by the supernatural...”

The blood he lost earlier that night had left him weak and lightheaded. Combined with the soothing evenness of his mother’s voice, Keith slipped hard and fast into sleep.

Something like the salt spray of the ocean hit his face, except it was freezing. His eyes snapped open. He stood at a glacial precipice with a turbulent black ocean beneath.

The underworld didn’t look much different than the desert. It was barren and flat and pale. Except for the cold, which stung his skin and sank into his bones. Dark waves crashed over and over into bottom of the white cliff face, but they made no sound. The air was quiet here.

Something purred behind him.

Keith whirled around to find a hooded demon—He knew it was the second he saw it; it didn’t look human at all—standing at the edge with him. A black cat perched on its sharp shoulder.

The demon held out a hand with taloned fingers, waiting to be given something. Reluctantly, Keith handed the knife from his belt. She brought it up to her—face? She didn’t _have_ much of a face, except a fanged mouth kept shut tight. Creepy, but actually kind of a relief. She couldn’t see how dumb Keith looked in the all the stuff Pidge had piled onto him.

The cat stared at the knife closely while the demon with no eyes seemed to do the same. After some consideration, the cat hopped off her shoulder. It landed on the icy white ground without a sound. Then, it walked right off the edge of the glacier.

“No!” Keith lunged after it, but his arms grasped air.

He lost balance and nearly toppled down with it, except the cat never went down. The edge wasn’t an edge anymore. Keith stumbled forward onto a crystallized ledge that hadn’t been there seconds before.

While the cat walked on carelessly without a single look back, a white platform slowly materialized across the darkness, just in front of each trot of its paw. Keith leaned over its edge and stared down, stunned. It seemed miles above the violent, silent sea beneath. He gaped at the cat still prowling off without him, with no concern whatsoever for Keith’s state of shock. He gaped some more at the bridge growing second by second through space, stretching further away from him in a straight white line.

He turned back to the demon. “I’m supposed to follow your cat?”

She nodded.

“‘Kay, then.” Keith zipped Lance’s jacket up to his neck in an attempt to fight the raw, biting cold seeping beneath his clothes. He turned to go and took a step toward the bridge, before turning back halfway to add, “Bye.”

The demon gave a wry wave of her clawed hand.

The cat was already a black dot in the distance. While he wasn’t looking, an archway had materialized along the bridge. Keith made himself walk confidently down the pristine platform. It was hard to fake with his arms wrapped tight around himself, desperately trying to trap in what little body heat he had left.

It took around five minutes to reach the arch. Its design was minimal, strange and smooth. Keith stepped through and saw a second arch, another five minutes away. On his first step toward it, something swept his feet out from under him. He dropped hard, suddenly thankful for the black helmet that broke his fall.

“Hey, now,” someone said.

A different demon’s face entered Keith’s view. She looked upside down to him from his angle on the floor.

“Didja really think you could just pass right through here?”

“I didn’t see you.”

“No shit!” she laughed, gesturing to vaguely to the entirety of Keith’s body on the ground.

He rolled to his feet with a glare.

“Aw, don’t take it too hard.” She gave him a wink, and then he watched her disappear.

Just. Right before his eyes. She vanished.

“See?” Her voice spoke clear as day, into his ear. “You never stood a chance.”

He felt a weight on his shoulder, but nothing was there. After a beat, a red-skinned hand manifested. Not unlike the bridge, he watched the demon’s entire arm materialize little by little.

“Man, you didn’t even jump,” she marveled, as her head and shoulders faded back into view.

“Sorry? I’m so cold I’m having delayed reactions.”

It was true. Keith couldn’t feel his nose or fingers at the moment.

“Hurry up and gimme my prezzie, then. Before you freeze to death.”

Without waiting for Keith to give it, she snatched the helmet right off his head.

“Wait, I can die here?”

“Do you _know_ where you _are?”_

The demon did not wait for an answer before tucking the helmet under her arm and disappearing with it. Keith had a feeling the question was rhetorical anyway. The only thing he could do was walk straight to the second arch. He could see a third demon waiting for him beneath it. Also, he now noticed two yellow lights glowing in the distance beyond it, like moons in the sky.

He took Pidge’s glasses off when he came near, starting to get the hang of how this is supposed to go. He held them out as an offering to the demon under the arch.

Her fingers closed around the glasses, knuckles barely brushing his, and stayed there without taking them. “Keith?”

“You know my name?”

“It’s me. Acxa.”

Keith blinked, unsure what to make of the expectant gaze from her.

He gently shook his head. “I don’t…”

He trailed off, disarmed by the offended look in her eye and the sudden release of her hand. How would he know anyone from this place? Who could possibly have told him about—

“You know my mom?”

“ _Our_ mother. Kova told me about the knife.”

Keith stared at her, shell-shocked.

Acxa looked angry now. “She didn’t tell you before you came?”

His reply came a few seconds late, after he forced himself to tear a little bit of his focus away from _his sister’s_ face. “No—I—We had a lot to talk about and a little time. I don’t think either of us is good at talking so—”

He realized, dimly, that their mom made a wise choice rambling about some boring demon stuff instead of dropping this bomb on him while he was supposed to be falling asleep.

Acxa grudgingly took Pidge’s glasses from him. “So, if it’s not for your family… What did you come _here_ for?”

With a pang of guilt, he admitted, “Trying to get someone back.”

“Someone dead? That’s a hard one to get.”

“No. An incubus. He thought he killed me and he left.”

“Was he stupid? An incubus can’t hurt you.”

“Someti—Wait, _what?”_

“Kind of common sense.”

“I didn’t know I was half until an hour ago!”

 _“What?”_ The anger on her face grew fiercer, and Keith realized it wasn’t at him. It was for him. “He kept you in the dark about what you are?”

“Uh, yeah. Are you telling me Lance was starving himself for no reason that entire time?”

“Oh, it’s _Lance...”_ Acxa hastily covered up the judgment in her voice by adding, “No, you’re probably the perfect one for him. You’re half incubus, so you take back half of the quintessence you give him each time.”

“Still, if I’m only getting back half, won’t I eventually run out?”

“That’s the benefit of being human. Your quintessence sustains itself. Demons do not generate any of of our own. It’s why we have to feed on you.”

“But I blacked out on just the third time.”

“You probably tried to give too much at once.” She answered everything easily, matter-of-factly, like it was common knowledge. “And, you have humans around if you need a boost. You’re less deadly than a full lilin is.”

He pictured Lance having a jealous fit at just the implication of that. Still, the news that they could be okay made Keith happier than he had felt in a long time. He felt like he could hug Acxa.

He didn’t, though. “Thanks, I—I think you just saved us.”

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly. “You’re not done here yet. You still have to get past Zethrid.”

She stepped aside to let Keith pass through the arch.

He went a few steps past it, then turned back. “Hey.”

She looked at him attentively.

“So. Since you’re a succubus…” Keith shifted his weight from foot to foot. “You could swing by Indian Springs, Nevada while you’re on earth sometime. It’s a cool place.”

“I will,” she answered like it was a matter of fact.

Keith walked away with a spring in his step.

He expected there to be another arch next—Things come in threes, he thought. For as far as he could see, the white platform stretched forward into darkness with nothing ahead but the two moons in the sky. Keith walked for what seemed like an hour, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the cold had made him lose sense of time. It was painful to withstand and made every minute agonizing. Every muscle in his body had gone rigid, his jaw and fists clenched so hard they hurt. His bones shook and he couldn’t get them under control.

The longer he dragged his numb feet forward, the more something massive came into view. The lights above were not moons. They were the yellow eyes of a colossal lion curled up at the end of the bridge.

In front of the lion, a herculean keeper with that black cat licking its paw at her feet. She towered a foot above Keith and seemed twice as wide. Not even in the military had he seen someone this ripped.

“Surprised you got this far,” she said.

It sounded more like mockery than actual surprise. Keith was too cold to think of a retort. He reached into the pocket of Lance’s hoodie and tossed the cookie at her, aiming for her face.

The demon effortlessly snatched it out of its trajectory to her nose.

Her face scrunched up as she examined the plastic bag in her wide palm. “Fuck is this?”

“Peanut butter cookie.”

She barked a short, dry laugh. “Ha! You think _this_ can get you a meeting with our ruler?”

With another laugh, she ate the whole cookie in one bite. Her entire expression changed.

“Oh, shit,” she said mid-chew, “It’s actually— _Mmm_ —Okay, this is sick.”

Keith felt a deep relief that Hunk was the kind of person to pack snacks for Pidge. It was a little annoying she ate them all, though.

The demon took her time savoring it before finally gulping it down. “Don’t know if that’s enough to get you in though,” she said, crossing her arms.

“What?” he snapped.

She closed her eyes and shrugged. “You should’ve brought more.”

“It’s all I had,” he pleaded, desperate and enraged.

A deep rumble disturbed them both. With a sound like an engine purring, the lion’s mouth opened. The guard calmly stepped backwards, out of its way, holding one arm out across Keith’s chest to push him along with her. A staircase unfolded inside of its maw, with someone already gracefully walking down its steps.

The demon placed a fist over her heart and dropped down on one knee. “Princess Allura.”

 _“Ow!”_ Keith snarled when her other hand struck the back of his knee, causing it to buckle and hit the floor beside her.

“Zethrid, be kind,” the princess ordered.

“I barely touched him,” she groused before turning to Keith. “Hope you brought an offering for the princess.”

With shivering fingers, Keith dragged the zipper of Lance’s jacket downward. It was the last thing he had and the one he wanted to part with least in this cold. He grimaced as he pulled the sleeves away from his arm and unimaginably frigid air bit into his bare skin. Keith passed it to Zethrid, who passed it to Allura.

His blood felt like iced sludge in his veins. His muscles ached from staying clenched to brace the cold. He couldn’t stop shaking. Even breathing hurt; the air so bitterly icy that it stung the inside of his throat.

Meanwhile, the princess slipped the jacket on.

“What do you think?” she asked Zethrid.

“Looks better on you.”

Allura smiled, then her bright eyes turned to Keith. “Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for someone,” he answered, trembling and pitiful.

“You must love them.”

Keith shrugged. “I dunno.”

Zethrid snorted.

Allura also brought her fingers up to her lips to cover a laugh. “Well, alright. Come inside.”

While Keith pulled himself to his feet and over to the mouth of the lion, Allura held a limp wrist in front of Zethrid. Zethrid took her hand and placed a loyal kiss on it. Allura’s fingers closed around Zethrid’s and brought the back of the guard’s palm up to her own lips, where she placed a kiss in return. They shared a fond look before Allura unlaced their hands to focus on Keith.

As the mouth closed behind them, she led Keith through a doorway and into… A field of flowers. He looked behind him, but the entrance was just—a door frame standing up in a field, against a backdrop of meadows and distant mountains. The air in this place was temperate, thank god. Keith still felt the chill from the white bridge in his marrow, but not having to stand in it any longer was a blessing.

Allura walked ahead of him. Keith’s eyes were drawn to the hem of her dress dragging over the vivid emerald grass—It left a trail of blossoming pink and blue flowers in its wake. He followed her with his eyes glued downward, mesmerized by the sight of them budding and blooming in seconds before his eyes.

“Are you a demon too?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m much older than them.” Allura stopped at a spot that pleased her and took a seat on the grass.

Keith watched her arrange the skirt of her dress around her in a neat circle. In the bright light of the meadow, he could see the various opalescent colors that shone in her eyes.

“Are you a god?”

Allura shrugged one shoulder. “If you believe in those.”

She patted the space next to her in the grass and Keith took the invitation. He sat down, careful not to crush the flowers Allura had brought forth.

“You’re the first human to come this far to find the ones you lost,” Allura said.

Keith’s focus snagged on the plural. “The ones?”

From the pocket of Lance's jacket, Allura withdrew an elegant stack of cards. Those certainly had not been in there when Keith put it on. She placed the top three in the deck side by side over the blue fabric of her skirt before placing the rest back into her pocket.

She flipped the first over.  “Your lover.”

She flipped the middle. “Your father.”

She flipped the third. “Your friend.”

Keith couldn’t make anything of the abstract imagery illustrating the cards, but they had names. The five of cups first, the moon in the middle, the king of cups third. He knew exactly who they were. The worst part was that he didn’t know if any of them even _wanted_ to come back.

“You may take only one card,” said Allura.

“My dad’s not dead… Shit, _is he?”_

Allura just looked at him with inscrutable blue eyes. No answer. Without hesitation, Keith flipped the middle card over. He spent enough time waiting in the desert for a father that didn’t miss him enough to return. The crippling longing Keith used to have for him to come back had subsided these days.

His fingers hovered over Shiro’s.

“They told me bringing back the dead wouldn’t be this easy.”

“They were right.”

“Then, what?”

“You would have a shade of Shiro.”

“What does that mean?”

“A version of him.”

“Explain?”

Allura held Keith’s stare, but her lips remained sealed.

“Oh, come _on_.” He took out his frustration by plucking a fistful of grass out of the earth and dumping it on her skirt. Dirt and green blades sprinkled over the cards. It took maybe three seconds for the flare of his temper to pass, which left him feeling self-conscious. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

The princess only responded by raising her eyebrows while her lips stayed pressed in a hard line. Sort of. Keith thought the corners looked pinched, like she was fighting to keep a serious face on. Keith hoped his face wasn’t red. He couldn’t believe he just did that. To a _god._

He cleared his throat and tried to pretend it never happened. “What about the Holts?”

“The what?”

“They… They were in the same accident as Shiro.”

Allura shook her head gently. “They are not in your cards.”

Oh. Well, why would they be? Keith never knew them. Just of them. He picked up the King of Cups.

If he found Shiro, he would know where the Holts are. Or at least, what happened to them. Lance would understand how important this was to Pidge. And him.

But if they were dead… Keith could only bring one card back.

He put Shiro’s card back, face down. It wouldn’t be fair to Pidge or her mom.

He took the five of cups card and held it against his ribs.

“Are you sure?” the princess asked, her hand hovering over the two cards he turned over.

He nodded. “Now what?”

Allura swept up the cards left on her skirt and put them in her pocket. Keith tried not to feel devastated by that.

“Lie back on the grass.”

Keith did as she instructed. He blinked up at a periwinkle sky.

“Close your eyes.”

He did. The clatter of plastic falling to the floor sprung his eyes open. The sky was gone, replaced with the familiar cracks of his bedroom ceiling. A drip of water from one of its weak spots hit Keith right between the eyes just as he became conscious of raindrops softly pinging against the window.

He sat up, still shivering, with a damp chill of cold sweat over his skin. Shiro’s helmet, Pidge’s glasses, and Lance’s jacket weren’t on his body anymore. But he had the five of cups still clutched to his chest. Except it wasn’t the card and it was clutching him back. Lance sat up in the space beside him, glancing around like a man lost in the woods. Lance with dewy skin and smooth lips and long lashes. Keith had gotten so accustomed to seeing him sickly that he forgot how radiant Lance really was.

With the hand that wasn’t held tight against Keith’s shirt, Lance reached up to touch his fingers to Keith’s jaw, his lips, his cheek. “What did you _do?_ And why’s Krolia here?”

Feeling nauseous with relief, Keith reluctantly tore his eyes off Lance to see his mother leaning against the wall across from them. “Uh. Pidge and I tried to summon you back. And we got her.”

Lance’s eyes narrowed at his mom. “Well, _back off_ , I saw him first.”

“You didn’t,” she and Keith said in unison.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

His mom ignored Lance and spoke to Keith. “I’m glad you made it.”

“Yeah, thanks.” It came out sounding sarcastic the way Keith said it, but he meant it.

At least she seemed to get it. She gave him a nod and said, “I’ll let you talk,” before dipping out and shutting the door behind her.

Dark blue eyes analyzed the pentagram on the bed sheets, the bowl on the floor, the candles around the room. “What did you _do?”_ he repeated, as a whisper this time.

“I went after you.” Keith let their laced hands drop to his lap. “I thought you were messing with me when you said hell is ice.”

“Why?” Lance didn’t look happy about it. He looked wounded. “What do you want from me?”

“I wanted you to stay. You said you didn’t want to leave me.”

“But I did. And I chose not to come when you tried to summon me.”

“Seriously? Dick move! But—It’s actually good you didn’t. I wouldn’t have met my mom.”

“Your— _Krolia?”_

Keith nodded.

“You’re an incubus too?”

“I’m half. I’m _half_ , Lance, you were never really hurting me.”

“How can you be half? That doesn’t—Succubi _can’t—_ with humans.”

“I’ve been told there was a deal with a witch. I was essentially a parting gift that my father never wanted. My mom always planned to leave me with him. He probably just acted like he wanted a kid in hopes that it would tie her down.” Keith let go of Lance’s hand to bow his head and press his fingertips into his eyelids. “I’ve been so pathetic…”

Lance ran a soothing palm up Keith’s spine. “What do you mean?”

“I told myself all the time I didn’t need either of them, I was better off without them, I didn’t care that they forgot me. But it was bullshit. Delusional bullshit. I spent a year living here, in the fucking desert, by myself. All because I thought that, maybe, after spending their whole life ignoring me, one of them would have a change of heart and decide they want to be with me.”

Keith looked up with tired eyes. “You know how in stories there’s always a catch to magic? I think the catch was that my parents could have an impossible child with each other, but no one would ever be able to love it.”

“That’s not true,” Lance said, quietly.

“My parents aren’t bad people. My dad wasn’t cruel to me. My mom’s helping me now. They’re people who are perfectly capable of love and they decided that I—me, specifically, from birth—was not what they wanted or needed.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

Keith looked at Lance.

“You don’t ever get to hate someone you love who didn’t want you. You wanna, you _really_ fucking wanna. But you never bring yourself to it… because you always convince yourself the problem was you.”

“ _You_ aren’t,” Keith said, fiercely.

Lance cupped his cheek, fondly. “You went to hell and back? For moi?” A slow smile grew on his gorgeous face. His tone was mildly exasperated when he added, “You’re so dramatic.”

“You’re just mad you can’t top that.”

“Oh, I’ll _top_ that just fine.”

Keith huffed a silent laugh out through his nostrils and gave him a playful slap on the cheek. Lance gasped and, with the hand already resting on Keith’s face, gave him a tap back.

They came out of the bedroom laughing to themselves with fingers intertwined. Pidge lit up at the sight of Lance and ran across the small space to crash into his arms. They hugged tightly until she pulled away and punched him in the arm.

“OW!”

“You’re an asshole!”

“You tell him,” Keith said.

Lance had some apologizing to do, so Keith left them to it. His mom was kneeling on the living room floor, taking books out of one of the many boxes stacked in there.

He knelt across from her. “What’re you looking for?”

“You read any of these?”

“Some of them. There’s a lot.”

“You have a favorite?”

“I dunno. Call of the Wild?”

She paused to look up, visibly impressed. He didn’t know why. It was pretty basic reading, not long at all. She cast her eyes back down to the box and continued searching through it, faster now than before. After a minute, she made a little sound of victory in her throat and raised a book from its depths.

“What did you think of this?” She brandished an old, hardbound copy of White Fang.

“I haven’t read it.” He thought it would just be the more of the same shit in the other one.

“This one’s _better_.”

She flipped the front cover open, where there was a faded black stamp that read _El Paso Public Library_ and a pocket for date due slips. She pulled a polaroid out of the pocket and held it out for him. Keith took it.

In the photo, she sat on the front steps of a different house, one Keith vaguely remembered having spent his early childhood in. He was swaddled in her arms; just a tiny baby face barely visible through a bundle of blankets. Despite the little smirk on his mother’s face, he recognized the severe signs of weakness he’d seen in Lance a month ago. She was gaunt and sallow, with chapped lips and hair with the texture of hay.

He looked up and barely recognized her as the same person from the polaroid. “I’ve never seen this.”

“I tucked it in there ages ago to hide it. It’s not very flattering.”

“Yeah, I look stupid as hell.”

She smiled at him.

Keith took the book from her and carefully slid the photograph back into the library pocket. “I—I think I’m gonna move into town.”

“It’s a small town. We can find you.”

 

* * *

 

“My legs still feel like they’re vibrating,” Lance laughed to himself as he dismounted Keith’s bike.

Keith pulled his battered red helmet off his head and hooked it over one of the handles. “You get used to it.”

“Nah. Even when we rode every day, they still felt like this.” He removed the polished blue helmet from his head and set it on the seat. “Are you nervous?”

Keith snorted. “It’s like my legs are vibrating from it.”

Lance gave him a pat between the shoulder blades and pushed Keith to walk forward, up the steps to Pidge’s front door. “You’ll get used it.”

“I hope so.”

Inside, Mrs. Holt greeted both of them with warm, tight hugs. She had prepared dinner for all seven of them. Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Pidge’s mom, Keith’s mom, and Acxa all sat at the table together. Acxa looked drastically different from the first time Keith met her; She looked human. Keith took some comfort in seeing his mother and sister look as out of their depth in this situation as he felt. This seemed to be a first for all three of them.

“Hey Colleen, can I say grace?”

“Sure, Lance.”

He straightened up in his seat and everyone naturally bowed their heads.

“Nonono! Don’t look down. Everyone look up and around you.” A little confused, they all looked up at Lance. He grinned at them. “Check out all of us sitting here, looking great. I’m so glad that in a universe of infinite possibility, against seemingly impossible chances, we all managed to find our way to each other.”

“Amen,” Colleen said.

Keith ate warm food cooked for him with love. His mother sat on one side of him, his sister on the other, and all his friends across the table. And he just felt so _full._ His mother and Acxa didn’t speak much outside of politely answering questions directed to them. They didn’t really even ask Keith anything, they just looked at him fondly every now and then. It was great.

At the end of the meal, Lance left the table without a word, which was strange. Stranger still, he stepped out into the backyard. Keith rose from his chair and went after him. The night air was hot and dry, the sky black and cloudless, speckled with pinpricks of starlight. Lance didn’t see Keith come outside. His hands were occupied with bottles, bowls, utensils, and empty porcelain cups laid out on the outdoor table.

“What’s all this?” Keith circled around the table, examining the odd assortment of items laid out.

Two large clay bowls and one matching ladle. Several smaller bowls holding peeled fruits and powders. Two glass bottles of some clear liquor Keith didn’t recognize at all.

Lance plucked the fruit rinds out of the smaller bowl before throwing them to the bottom of one of the large ones. “Lemon and orange peel.” He grabbed a handful of something dark and sprinkled it over the peels. “Coffee beans.” Then he took a bowl of sugar the size of maybe two cups and dumped the whole thing in there. “ _Azúcar_ ,” he sang.

“Are you making punch?”

“Yeah, sort of. I wanted to do something cool with everyone here. Something you’d like.” Lance stirred up the ingredients at the bottom of the pot and pointed with his lips at one of the liquor bottles. “Wanna pour it in?”

“‘Kay. What’s…” Keith read the label as he unscrewed the top, “Aguardiente?”

“Firewater. Pour some in.”

“Damn, okay.” The smell was already burning Keith’s nostrils.

He tipped the contents of the bottle into the bowl until Lance said, “Stop.” He stirred the pot again. “You have a lighter?”

Keith dug a scratched up Bic out of the depths of his back pocket and passed it to him.

“Alright, here’s the part you’ll like.” Barely restraining an excited grin, Lance held the ladle up to the lighter and flicked it on.

Slowly, a blue flame ignited and danced around the circle of the spoon. Slowly, Lance lowered it into the pot. Slowly, the blue fire spread around the entire surface of the punch. He lifted the gently flaming ladle back out and held it out to Keith, who merely blinked at it.

“Taste it,” Lance said, as he dipped a finger into the ladle. The flames came with the alcohol over his finger, slithering and dancing around his knuckles, and Lance placed them on his tongue with a showoffish little smirk. “It’s good,” he assured Keith.

He followed Lance’s example, dipping a digit into the simmering flame within the ladle. It came out coated in alcohol and brilliant blue fire, which Keith immediately closed his lips around. The taste was smoke and sugar, with the sting of alcohol at the back of his throat.

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” Keith admitted, pulling his finger out of his mouth.

“Hang on, I’m just starting.” Lance picked up the bottle of aguardiente and poured more into the pot, little by little, until the wisps of blue flame grew to consume the entire surface of the bowl.

Its heat warmed Keith’s face and made sweat bloom at the hollow of his neck.

“Lance! What’s this?” Hunk called from the door.

The group trickled into the backyard from the dining room, drawn out by the flaming display and the heavy scent of coffee and citrus in the air.

Lance turned to them and lifted the ladle with a huge scoop of alcohol inside it up high, then let it pour down in a tiny waterfall of bright flames. “It’s called queimada.”

The sight drew out loud, delighted gasps from their friends. Lance ladled the aguardiente high into the air and repeatedly created a flaming cascade from ladle to bowl. As the liquid splashed into the bowl, ricocheting droplets formed flaming spots on the table and the nearest bystander—Keith’s mom, who used her sleeve to pat out the little fires starting on her clothing with little concern.

“This is so cool.” Pidge grabbed a fistful of sugar and flicked bits of it into the pot, agitating the fire and making it flare.

“Careful, Lance!” Hunk and Mrs. Holt cried in unison as the flames in the pot grew high enough to lick up his arm.

“It’s fine, don’t worry.” Lance brushed it off, waving his arm through the fire to show that it wasn’t burning. He looked up at Keith, Krolia, and Acxa with a triumphant little grin. “I guess I’m getting stronger.”

Lance picked up a cup at the table and filled it with punch. Even inside the cup, the blue flames still set the drink’s surface alight and slithered in small circles around the rim. “Who wants the first?”

Pidge immediately snatched the cup of fire and punch from his hand.

“Hang on—Hold your breath when you drink—It’s hot as shit and the steam’s no joke.”

She took in a breath, then tipped the punch into her mouth, unafraid to drink the flame. Instantly, her entire body clenched and and she hacked a series of disgusted coughs. “This tastes nasty!”

Lance laughed. “Give it to Hunk if you don’t want it.”

“Fuck you, I want it.”

“Katie, language,” Colleen chided gently, with an embarrassed side glance at Keith’s mom.

“It’s fine, I don’t give a shit about swearing,” she assured Colleen as Lance distributed the queimada.

Keith took a drink. The taste mostly burned, but not without traces of earthy coffee, caramelized sugar, and lemon peel.

They drank around the fire together, laughing and talking beneath the stars. As the night wound down and the aguardiente started to have its effect on Keith, he took Lance’s hand and pulled him aside. He brought him around the side of the house, back to his bike.

“Are we going?” Lance asked, voice full of concern.

Keith shook his head and looked down at his drink. “No. I just wanted to tell you… This was cool.”

“Cool.” Lance stepped close and fondly draped one arm across Keith’s shoulder, the other still dangling at his side with his own drink in hand. “Thanks.”

They looked into each others eyes, sharing something warm and blissful that could stay unspoken for now.

“I never thought this would actually happen for me,” Keith finally said.

“Me neither.” Lance’s smile was unusually timid. “I’m glad you came back for me.”

“I’m glad you left.”

Lance scoffed, mouth opening in an offended grin.

“I’m serious,” Keith insisted.

“Uh, huh.”

“I wouldn’t have reconnected with my family if I didn’t choose to go after you, you know.”

Lance’s expression changed. With surprising ease, it faded from joking to unabashedly adoring. His face was so expressive, Keith constantly felt like he was snooping on things he shouldn’t know just from looking at him.

“You found your mom before you found me,” Lance said, voice soft now. “You didn’t have to go to the underworld.”

Keith pressed their foreheads together. They spoke so quietly when they stood this close. “I think I did.”

Lance hummed; a short, pleased noise. “You’re lucky I’m a pain in the ass, then, or none of this would’ve happened.”

Now, Keith scoffed. He pulled away just enough to bring his cup to his lips and tilt his head back to take a swig. He came back with his lips parted and flames over his tongue. They closed the tiny remaining space between them for a bone-meltingly intense kiss that tasted like fire and sweetness.

Simultaneously, both their cups smashed on the floor, discarded without a care in favor of wrapping their arms around each other. It felt so good to kiss Lance again without having to think about how to restrain it. It felt like abandoning his sentence, like indulging a killer craving. It was hot, heart-pounding blur of carnal heat mixed with suffocating intimacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's a video of what queimada looks like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QONcI27KoIg) if you've never seen it.
> 
> hope you enjoyed the story! it's the longest fic i've written yet, so any comments are loved and appreciated. if you like the mood and atmosphere i recommend listening to the song that inspired it: [the epilogue by †††](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ptWIZ36F4)
> 
>  
> 
> [also here's my tumblr if you wanna ask me anything](http://667-darkavenue.tumblr.com/)


End file.
